9 



■B-) 



Hollinger Corp. 
pH 8.5 



t 173 
17 
•py 1 



English Literature 



FROM THE BEGINNINGS 

TILL AFTER 

THE NORMAN CONQUEST 



BY 

STOPFORD A. BROOKE 



J > 3 5 

\ 



-) ^ » » J » » 

, > ) ) J J » > 1 ' 



\ . . 



• * * . * • ^ * » 



PHILADELPHIA 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

190T 



37 



TV'E LIBRARY OF 
00 "EGRESS, 

Two CoHi E3 Received 

NOV. 16 1901 

COPVHJQHT ENTRY 

CLAfS ^XXa H'> 

COPY a 



Copyright, 1901 
By J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 



FROM THE BEGINNINGS 

TILL AFTER 

THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 




HE first indwellers of the 
islands we call Great Britain 
and Ireland were a wild 
folk, coming we know not 
whence, who made rude stone 
weapons of flint, lived by hunt- 
ing, could make fires and gar- 
ments of skin, and dwelt in caves. These Palaeo- 
lithic people were succeeded by, or developed 
into, a Neolithic race whose weapons, still of 
stone, were now highly polished and skilfully 
wrought. They began pastoral life in our 
island, and settled finally into communities ; 
and the large-chamber tombs under earth, or 
their denuded remains, extending from Caith- 
ness to Dorset, show that they occupied all 
the habitable parts of the country. They were 
a dark-haired, dark-eyed, short, brave, and con- 
stant people ; and when they mingled afterwards 
with the Celtic race, they left some traces of 
their legends, religion, and law in the stories, 
the manners, and the language of the Celts. 
We may, with great probability, identify them 
with the earliest Picts of history, and the 
SiJures of South Wales were their descendants. 

3 



It is only in folklore that we can hope to 
recover something of the way they thought 
and felt, but in the west of Ireland and 
Scotland, in Wales, and in the Midland 
Counties of England we still meet short, dark- 
haired, long -skulled people who retain the 
characteristics of this steady and valiant race. 
It is not impossible that some of the elements 
of their character and thought have entered 
into and still influence English poetry. 

How long they lived undisturbed does not 
appear, but at last an Aryan folk, part of the 
first Celtic migration, invaded our island, drove 
back these Neolithic people to the west and 
north, but mingled with them, and the farther 
west and north they pushed the greater was 
the admixture. This first Celtic race are named 
the Goidels or the Gaels, and they colonised 
not only Great Britain, but also the Isle of 
Man, the Western Isles, and Ireland. They 
have lasted down to our own day, and the 
imaginative and enkindling spirit of their 
thought, literature, and art, infused into the 
English nature by intercourse and amalgama- 
tion, have had an intermittent and spiritual 
influence on the poetry and prose of England. 
That influence was sometimes great, as at the 
beginning of our literature. Sometimes it was 
but little, but it always inspired when it came. 
After King Alfred's days, and for a very long 
time, it ceased to do more than now and again 
to touch England; but it began to act on us 
again at the end of the eighteenth century, and 
at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of 
the twentieth the Gaelic spirit is doing much 
the same kind of work it did in England during 
the seventh and eighth centuries. 



It entered northern England from Iona> 
where Columba, bringing with him, and hand- 
ing down to his successors, the poetry and 
learning of Ireland, had set up his church and 
dwelling. Oswald, King of Northumbria, who 
had been educated at lona, summoned the 
Celtic monks to convert his country in 634 ; 
and Oswiu, also trained at lona, extended the 
Irish influence until the whole of Northumbria 
received the faith from Irish missionaries, and 
set .up a number of civilising monasteries on 
the Irish pattern. All the awakening and 
inspiring emotions of religion, out of which 
so much of literature is born, were kindled in 
the north of England at the Irish fire. This 
lasted untouched for thirty years ; and then, 
alongside with the Celtic, the Latin forms of 
learning and religion began to make their 
way from Ripon, from Wearmouth, from 
Hexham and Jarrow. The Celtic and the 
Latin influences mingled. Meanwhile the 
Irish impulse penetrated into Mercia and East 
Anglia from the north ; and the communica- 
tion between Ireland itself and England was 
constant, each interchanging the results of their 
work and knowledge. Even the south was not 
exempt from the pressure of Irish wisdom. 
The school at Canterbury in Theodore's days 
was full of Irish scholars. * Whole fleets' of 
students passed to and fro between Wessex 
and Ireland. Men like Ealdhelm were trained 
by Irish hermits who set up schools ; and 
Glastonbury became a special centre of Irish 
learning, legend, and song ; so that we may 
even say that Dunstan, long years afterwards, 
derived from the nest of Irish scholars who 
were settled there part of the spirit which 



made his character, and began that Renais- 
sance of English learning which Alfred had 
failed, but so nobly failed, to establish. This 
was the Goidelic invasion of England, and 
its imaginative and formative powers ran 
through all the poetry of Northumbria, and 
stimulated the desires of Wessex and Mercia 
to know, and to feel after, the unknown. 

A second Wandering of the Celtic race 
followed on the first, and some of its warriors, 
settling in Gaul, were allured by the white 
cliffs of England, and by the tales of sailors, 
to cross the Channel. The first of these in- 
vaders landed on the south-eastern coasts, 
perhaps as early as 300 B.C., and drove back 
the Goidels, as these had driven back the 
Neolithic people, to the west and north. 
The last of these Gaulish tribes who came to 
our land were the Belgae. To all these men 
of the second Celtic Wandering the name of 
^Brythons' has been given. When they had 
banished the Goidels from about a third part 
of Britain, the Romans checked their develop- 
ment for a year or two in 55 B.C., but did not 
come again for ninety years. During these 
ninety years the Brythons pushed on till they 
mastered the most of Britain, and even those 
lands where the Goidels remained (Devon, 
Cornwall, portions of Wales, Cumberland and 
Westmoreland, and part of Lancashire) became 
Brythonic in language, manners, and poetry. 
North of the Solway and the Tweed the 
Brythons also drove their way, but with less 
force than in our England. They found them- 
selves among a mixed people of Goidels and 
Neolithic folk in the Lowlands ; and this 
country, sometimes Brythonic, sometimes Goi- 



delic, ended by having in it an exceedingly 
mixed race, made up of these two Celtic 
strains dissolved in a Neolithic infusion ; but 
the Brythonic element was master. Into the 
north of Scotland the Brythons scarcely pene- 
trated. But wherever they were, their language 
prevailed. Later on they took the name of 
Cymry, and the English called them the Welsh. 
The fate they had given to the Goidels they 
met with at the hands of the English; until, 
after- a hundred and fifty years of war, the 
Brythons only existed as a separate people in 
Devonshire, Cornwall, Wales, and in Strath- 
clyde ; that is, in the country which extended 
from the Ribble through Cumberland and 
Westmoreland to the Clyde. 

The Cymry had a literature of their own, and 
they sang in verse the fortunes of their strife 
with the English, their own wars with one 
another, the war-deeds of their chieftains, and 
the tales of their families. Moreover, they 
made a host of stories in prose in which they 
embodied their myths and the legends of their 
ancestral heroes. Four great bards are said 
to have flourished among them in the later half 
of the sixth and the beginning of the seventh 
century. These were Aneurin, Taliessin, Lly- 
warch Hen, and Merddin ; and we possess in 
manuscripts which date from the twelfth to the 
fourteenth century some of their poems, added 
to and modernised. They sing the wars of the 
northern Cymry with the Angles, and of the 
Cymry of Whales with the West Saxons, in 
poems by Taliessin and Llywarch Hen. These 
poems are of the sixth century. In the seventh 
the poets celebrated the great struggle between 
the Northumbrians and Cadwallon and his son. 



This is the first period of Cymric poetry. 
When the northern kingdom of the Cymry 
decayed, and they emigrated to South Wales, 
the old poetry was applied in the tenth cen- 
tury to the new dwelling-place and the new 
fortunes of the Cymry. This is the second 
period. Later on a third school of literature 
arose, poetic in North Wales, and of mythical 
and romantic tales in South Wales ; and these 
tales are at the root of a great deal of English 
romance and song up to the present day. 
A fourth school of poetry, imitative of the 
old poetry of the north, continued under the 
Norman- Welsh rule till the days of Henry the 
Second, when the Black Book of Carmarthen 
was made up of some of the ancient poetry. In 
the following centuries the Red Book of Aneurin^ 
the Book of Taliessin^ and the Book of Hergest 
contained some also of the old poetry and 
of its later imitations. These were mingled 
with original work of a still later period. 

There existed then, close to the border-land 
between the English and the Cymry, a great 
body of living and growing poetry, and of im- 
aginative story-telling, which could hardly help 
influencing the Border-English when, after the 
first fierce years of the Conquest, the Welsh of 
West Wales, of Wales, and of Cumbria were so 
often either in alliance with the English or 
amalgamated with them. The Celtic genius of 
the Brythons stole in, year by year, into the 
English of the Border, from Berwick to Carlisle, 
from Carlisle to Chester, from Chester to 
Bristol, and from Bristol to Glastonbury and 
Exeter. When, after the Norman Conquest, the 
Normans seized a good part of South Wales, 
the Welsh imagination was interwoven with the 



Norman passion; and in days still later, after 
the twelfth century, the fifth period of Welsh 
poetry, developing itself in lyrics of love and 
of nature, full of lonely and graceful sentiment, 
had, as I believe, a well-marked influence on 
the birth and growth of the earliest English 
lyrics. As far as we can conjecture, the best 
of these lyrics were born on the lands of the 
Severn valley, and the first English poem of 
imaginative importance after the Conquest — the 
Brict of Layamon — arose in the heart of one 
who dwelt at Areley, on the banks of the Severn. 
There was no such amalgamation in the first 
hundred and fifty years of the conquest of 
Britain by the English ; the British were ruth- 
lessly slain or driven away. Among those who 
fled over-sea was the only literary man among 
the Britons whose name has attained reputation. 
This was Gildas, whose Latin book, De Excidio^ 
describes the horrors of the first years of the 
English invasion, and whose Epistola^ addressed 
to the kings and priests of the Britons, is a 
fierce and probably an exaggerated indictment 
of their rule and their immoralities. Never- 
theless, so far as his slight history goes, he is 
a sound authority. When, weary of trouble, 
he fled to Gaul, founded the Abbaye de Ruis, 
and died, British culture also died with him. 
He was not alone in his emigration. Hun- 
dreds of Britons took flight from the English 
sword, and out of this furious expulsion a 
Brythonic colony arose in France which played 
its own part in English literature. After the 
battles of Aylesford and Crayford in 455-57, 
and for fully a century and a half, the Britons 
of the southern counties and of South Wales 
emigrated to Armorica and made Brittany. 



10 

In that little corner of France the Brythonic 
traditions, legends, and myths, the imagina- 
tive ballads and story-telling of this Celtic 
race, lived on, and developed in freedom. 
When the Arthurian legend, which probably 
began among the northern Cymry (and the first 
records of which are to be found embedded in 
the compilation which goes under the name 
of Nennius — the Historia Britonum\ came to 
South Wales, it got from thence into Brittany, 
was taken up by Breton bards, freshly worked 
and added to, and then fell into the hands of 
the Normans. The Normans, having brought 
to bear upon it their formative genius, carried 
it back to South Wales, and then to England ; 
and it was first thrown into clear shape by a 
dweller in Wales, by Geoffrey of Monmouth, 
who composed into twelve Latin books his 
History of the Brito?ts, which, begun in 1132, 
took its final form in 1147. From that day 
to this, for nearly eight hundred years, the 
Brythonic story of Arthur has been one of 
the master-subjects of imaginative literature in 
England. This — the full tale of which belongs 
to the next section of this book — is the last 
thing to be said of the influence on English 
literature of the Brythons, the children of the 
second Celtic migration. 

These two Celtic invasions, the Goidelic 
and the Brythonic, were followed by another 
invasion. When the Brythons had been 
about four hundred years in Britain, the 
Romans, under Claudius, came to stay, 
ninety years after the invasion of Julius 
Csesar in 55 B.C. Their occupation, which 
lasted till a.d. 410, has had no power over 
English literature. To some extent it had 



II 

Christianised and Romanised the Brythons ; 
but the Roman influence did not really touch 
English literature till it came back with Chris- 
tianity in the seventh century to England, and 
linked a converted people to the long tradi- 
tions, literature, law, and glory of pagan and 
Christian Rome. But almost all the traces of 
this early occupation of Britain by the Romans 
were swept away by the hurricane of fire and 
sword which the English, coming in the middle 
of- the fifth century to conquer and to settle 
the land, let loose on the provincial civilisation 
of Britain. 

English Literature 

Before the Engilsb Invasion of Britain. 

The first Engle-land extended from South 
Sweden through Denmark and its islands to 
the lands about the mouth of the Elbe. Its 
indwellers were men of three tribes — the Jutes, 
the Angles, and the Saxons — and their common 
name and tongue was English. They lived 
along the coast, and in their marshy settle- 
ments fought on their western shores a fierce 
battle with the encroaching sea ; but nature 
was not so rough with them on the eastern 
coasts of Denmark. They had the expansive 
spirit which the sea encourages, and in their 
rude but seaworthy ships sailed in all weathers 
to ravage the neighboring coasts, terrible for 
courage and activity, for cruelty and greed, 
fearless of death and rejoicing in danger. 
From the.Humber to Southampton they kept 
the British coast in terror during the later 
years of the Roman occupation. 

Like other nations, they sang their battles 
at the feast and celebrated their gods. They 



12 



built up sagas of their ancestral heroes, and 
most of their chiefs were also bards. The 
older men, who did not go on piracy, farmed 
the lands of their settlements, and agriculture 
as well as war had its own songs. In these 
lays of religion, of war and agriculture, English 
poetry began in the ancient Engle-land while 
Britain was still a Roman province. 

Of this heathen poetry on the Continent we 
have still some fragments left. Portions of 
the mythical sagas, founded on the doings of 
nature and of the ancestral heroes, lie em- 
bedded in Beowulf, The Battle of Finnsburg 
is the sole remnant of a series of sagas which 
were made before the time when the Folk- 
Wanderings began in 375. Waldhere^ the 
fragment of a saga on the story of Walther 
of Acquitaine, carries us back to the days 
of the Theodoric cycle of tales. A poem 
entitled Widsith retains verses which date 
from the time when the English were still 
fighting in their lands about the Eyder and 
the Elbe. The Complaint of Deor belongs to 
another world than that of our island, and we 
possess in the scattered verses of the Charms 
which the farmer sang as he ploughed and 
swarmed his bees, and went on a journey and 
exorcised the demons of cramp and fever, per- 
haps the oldest remains of heathen song. 

The Charm for Bewitched Land contains pure 
heathen lines such as : 

Hail be thou, Earth, mother of men. 

Fruitful be thou in the arms of the God. 

Be filled with thy fruit for the fare-need of men. 

And the rites of the ploughing which are there 
described are the old heathen rites of the farmer 



13 

when he first drove his plough through the 
acre. As we have them, they are Christianised, 
but their pagan origin appears through the 
Christian recension. In the Charm for the 
Swarming of Bees^ gravel is thrown over the 
bees, and the spell-master sings, * Let this earth 
be strong against all wights whatever;' and to 
the bees, * Sit ye. Victory-women, sink ye to 
the earth.' But the Charm against a Sudden 
Stitch is even closer to heathendom. The 
Charm-doctor stands over the sick man with 
his shield, guarding him from the darts of the 
Witch Maidens, and describes their ride over 
the hill and their flinging of spears, while he 
charms out the javelin which has caused the 
cramp. These are remnants as old as the 
hills, fragments from the ancient Teutonic 
lands before the English left them for Britain. 

The earliest of the longer poems is Widsith^ 
the Far-voyager. Its personal part, in which the 
bard tells of himself and his wanderings, may 
belong in its original form to the fifth century, 
but many additions were afterwards made to 
these ancient verses. Names of men much 
earlier and later than the fifth century were 
foisted in by later editors of the poem. The 
real interest of the verses is not in these ques- 
tionable matters, but in the proud and pleasant 
account Widsith gives of himself as a wander- 
ing minstrel, and of the honour and gifts 
lavished on poets. We see him at the court 
of Eormanric, singing his mistress Ealdhild's 
praises over all lands. We hear him and his 
mate Scilling singing in the hall while all the 
lords are listening. He tells of the fighting 
with the Huns in the Wistla woods, and he 
ends by an outburst of pleasure in his art 



and in the honour it receives from all who 
care for a noble fame. 

The Scop (that is, the Shaper, the Poet), in 
the Complaint of Deor^ is not so happy as 
Widsith. He is no rover, but lives with his 
lord, and has from him lands and wealth. But 
his rival, Heorrenda, supplants him, and this 
song is written to console his heart. Others, 
Weland, Hild, Geat, Theodoric, suffered dread- 
ful pain. ^This he overwent, so also will I,' 
is the refrain of each verse. The allusions to 
the sagas of Theodoric and Gudrun and 
Eormanric prove that the English knew, as 
WaldJiere also proves, the Germanic cycle of 
stories. None of the examples are Christian, 
but the poem suffers from a Christian interpola- 
tion. It is a true lyric, with a * refrain' at the 
end of each verse, and this is unique in Old 
English poetry. 

The two fragments of the poem of WaldJiere^ 
found by Werlauff at Copenhagen, are made 
from the original German seventh-century form 
of the poem. The Christian and chivalric 
elements of the later forms are entirely absent 
in the verses we possess. Waldhere flies with 
his love Hildeguthe fromi the Huns, and is 
pursued by Gu there and Hagena. She en- 
courages him to fight against twelve warriors 
in our first fragment; the second is part of 
the dialogue between Guthere and Waldhere. 

The few lines we have of the Fight at 
Finnsbiirg belong to an older cycle of saga 
than that of Theodoric. There is another 
portion of this Finn-saga in Beowulf and the 
story there told either precedes or continues our 
fragment. It is sung by the Scop at the feast 
in Heorot, Hrothgar's hall. Finn, king of the 



■*•<. 



15 

North Frisians, has married Hildeburh, sister 
of Hnaef. He invites Hnsef and his comrade 
Hengest, with sixty men, meaning to slay them. 
The verses describe the attack and defence of 
the hall. It is a fierce, impassioned piece of 
war-poetry. The related passage in Beowulf 
describes the burning of Hildeburh's sons on 
the pyre, and her bitter mourning for them, 
and the vengeance taken on Finn. 

These are our heathen fragments, all of them 
so infiltrated with Teutonic saga that we believe 
that the English, when they came to our land, 
possessed and sang the great stories of their 
Continental brethren. Of other stories, both 
mythical and heroic, we have remains scattered 
through Beowulf— \hQ myth of Scyld ; the story 
of Heremod; the story of Thrytho, which 
belongs to the ancient saga of Offa ; the story 
of Ingeld and Froda and Freaware, which 
was the origin of a whole circle of tales ; and, 
oldest of all, the story of Sigmund, which after- 
wards was developed into the great Volsunga- 
Saga in the north, and in Germany into the 
Nibelungen Lied. 

Beowulf. 

We have one great saga of our own — the Saga of 
Beowulf. The poem of Beowulf^ as we possess it, 
was probably composed into its present form in 
the eighth century in England, we do not know 
by whom ; and received, either then or afterwards 
when it was put into the West Saxon dialect, the 
addition, but in moderation, of certain Christian 
elements. The story is, however, honestly heathen, 
and its original lays arose on the Continent among 
the English. They came to our England with 
the Angles, were developed in Northumbria and 
Mercia, and may have reached full saga propor- 



i6 

tions in the seventh century. In the eighth (though 
some make it later) one poet took up all the scat- 
tered forms of it, wrought them into a whole, 
gave them an ethical unity in the character of 
Beowulf, the ideal hero and king, and filled the 
complete poem with his own personality. 

Beowulf seems to have been an historical person- 
age of the sixth century, a Geat, and nephew of 
Hygelac, who is the Chochilaicus whom Gregory 
of Tours mentions as raiding the Frisian shore, and 
slain by its defenders. Beowulf was present at 
the battle, and avenged his lord's death. Hygelac 
died in 520. Beowulf placed Hygelac's son on the 
throne, and after his death reigned fifty years. 
This brings the historic Beowulf up to about 570. 
But this historic personage has not much to do 
with the poem. Its main story (with folk-lore 
admixtures from earlier and savage times) is the 
transference to the hero of the mythical deeds of 
Beowa, who is one of the presentations of the 
Sun and the Summer, and whose fight with the 
Winter and the Darkness, with the frost-giants, 
the destroying sea and the poisonous mist of the 
moorland, imaged in the poem by the monster 
Grendel and the Dragon, was sung in the ancient 
England over the sea. The destruction of Grendel 
and his dam by Beowulf is said to be the destruc- 
tion of the winter powers of the sea-coast as 
they attack one of the Danish settlements which 
felt alike the charging of the icy sea and the 
deadly cold and venom of the fenland. The 
story of Beowulf overcoming in his last fight the 
Dragon is probably the story of the aging Summer 
contending with the powers of incoming Winter, 
who attempts to grasp the treasures of the harvest. 
The Summer God saves the golden hoard, but dies 
in the struggle. These myths are embodied in the 
story of Beowulf, and through them his personality 
is built up by the poet. He becomes the English 
and North-Germanic ideal of a king, and the ideal 
is historic. The manners and customs both in war 



17 

and peace, the picture of the young men sailing on 
adventure, the town with its hall and meadows and 
garths, the etiquette and feast of the hall, the daily 
doings of the settlement from morn to night, the 
position of women, the home-life, the temper of 
mind, the thoughts and feelings of our forefathers, 
are all portrayed in this poem, and there are few 
historical records so vivid and so interesting. It 
is the book of our beginnings. It is also a great 
sea-tale, fit for the origin of the poetry of the mis- 
tress of the seas. 

Bedwulf hears that Hrothgar is harried by a mons- 
ter, Grendel, who haunts Heorot, the hall of the 
folk, and devours Hrothgar's thanes. The distress- 
ful tale thrills the hero with pity, and he sets sail to 
help the Danish chief Arriving, he is told of Gren- 
del, the man-beast of some folk-tale, the creature of 
the mist and the stormy sea, strong as thirty men, 
lonely and dreadful, greedy of blood, hating all joy, 
who tears and eats his victims. Beowulf and his 
men sleep in the hall, and Grendel, stalking over 
the misty moors, strikes in the doors, and rends 
one of Beowulf s men, but meets at last the grip 
of the hero. In the fierce wrestle Grendel's arm 
is torn away, and the monster flies through the 
night to die. Next morning all is happiness at 
Heorot ; the feast is held and gifts are given ; but 
at night Grendel's dam comes to avenge her son, 
and Hrothgar's best battle-man is torn in pieces 
by the wolf-woman of the sea. 

This is the re-creation in a later form of the 
original myth — a separate and later lay. It is 
now woven into the poem by the single writer of 
the whole. Grendel's dam is a sea-monster, and 
lives in a sea-cave ; her hands are armed with 
claws ; her blood eats like fire ; she is even more 
savage than her son. The place where she dwells 
among the cliffs, in a gorge where the black waters 
welter furiously, is as savage as her nature ; and 
the description of it is the first of those natural 
descriptions of wild scenery of which our modern 

2 



i8 

English poetry is so full. Beowulf plunges into 
the sea, rises with the monster who has seized 
him into her cave, slays her with a magic sword, 
and returns triumphant with Grendel's head to 
Hrothgar, who sends him home to Hygelac laden 
with gifts and honour. This closes the first part 
of the poem. The second part opens some fifty 
years after, when Beowulf is an old man. He has 
been long king of the country, and his people love 
him. A Dragon, angry that his hoard is robbed, 
flies forth to burn and ravage ; and Beowulf arms to 
fight his last fight and to win the treasure for his 
folk. Only one of his thanes comes to help him, 
and in the battle he is wounded to the death. The 
Dragon is slain, the treasure is won, and the hero 
burned on a lofty pyre overlooking the sea. 

The poem, many full accounts and translations 
of which have been set forth, runs to 3183 lines, 
and its manuscript is in the Cottonian Library in 
the British Museum. It has been said to be an 
epic, but it is more justly a narrative poem. It 
has neither the unity, the weight, the continuity, 
nor the mighty fates of an epic. Nevertheless it 
reaches a spiritual unity from the consistency of 
the hero's character developed from daring youth 
to wise and self-sacrificing age. It reaches even 
excellence in the clearness with which its portraits 
are drawn and its natural scenery represented. 
Our power of natural description in poetry begins 
with Beowiclf. The verse has a fine ring in it ; 
the tale, if we forget the bardic repetitions, is 
simple, direct, and rapid ; and the spirit of it 
is as bold and dashing as the stormy sea near 
which all its actors live. Indeed, the presence 
and power of the sea is everywhere felt in the 
poem. Its close is the close of the heathen 
poetry of England ; for, though its composition 
into a whole belongs to Christian England, the 
lays worked up in it go back to the seventh, and 
some of them, it may be, to the sixth, century. 



19 

The Embarking of Beowulf. 

Then the well-geared heroes 
Stepped upon the stem, while the stream of ocean 
Whirled the sea against the sand. There into the ship's 

breast 
Bright and carved things of cost, carried then the heroes, 
And their armour well-arrayed. And the men out 

pushed 
Their tight ocean- wood on adventure long desired. 
Swiftly went above the waves, with a wind well fitted 
Likest to a fowl, their Floater, with the foam around its 

throat. 

Till at last the Seamen saw the land ahead, 
Shining sea-cliffs, soaring headlands, 
Broad sea-nesses. So this Sailer of the sea 
Reached the sea-way's end. 

Beowulf and Breca at Sea. 

When we swam on the Sound, our sword was laid bare. 
Hard-edged in our hands ; and against the Hron-fishes 
We meant to defend us ; nor might Breca from me 
Far o'er the flood-waves at all float away, 
Smarter on ocean ; nor would I from him. — 
There we two together were tossed on the sea, 
Five nights in all, till the flood apart drove us : 
Swoln were the surges, of storms 'twas the coldest, 
Wan waned the night, and the wind from the north, 
Battling-grim, blew on us ; rough were the billows. 

Then, eastward, came light. 

Bright beacon of God ; the billows grew still. 
And now I could see the sea-headlands shine, 
The wind-swept rock-walls. Wyrd often delivers 
An Earl yet undoomed if his daring avail. 

Half-Heathen Poetry, 

Elegies and Kiddles. 

When the lays of Beowulf were made into a 
poem Christianity had been long established in 
England. It had come with Augustine in 597. 
Its last conquest was the Isle of Wight in 686. 
It took, therefore, ninety years to Christianise 



20 



England. During that interval, and indeed for a 
long time afterwards, a semi-heathenism prevailed. 
Even in Cnut's reign we find the laws forbidding 
the worship of heathen gods by the farmers and 
labourers ; and it is more than probable that the 
greater number of the warriors, bards, and chiefs 
of the seventh and eighth centuries were only- 
Christian in name, and followed their heathen 
ways of thinking, feeling, and fighting. The 
poetry composed by the bards in a chiefs fol- 
lowing and by the wandering minstrels, outside 
of the monastic influence, was not likely to be 
influenced to any depth by Christianity. There are 
a few examples of such poetry in the Exeter Book, 
and five of them are of great interest — the Ruined 
Burg, the Wanderer, the Seafarer, the Wifes 
Complaint, and the Husband'^s Message. Along 
with these we may place a number of the Riddles, 
written, it is supposed, by Cynewulf when he was 
a wild young poet at some noble's court, and which 
treat of natural phenomena, of war and armour, of 
the feast and the hall of the folk, of daily life in 
the settlements, of hunting and cattle, of forest 
and fish and bird. 

The first five poems mentioned above may 
fairly be called elegiac. They are full of regret 
for the glory of the past and the sadness of 
the present, and though we have no means of 
dating them, I should be inclined to place them in 
the first quarter of the eighth century. They are 
devoid of Christian sentiment and doctrine. The 
prologue and epilogue of the Wanderer, and the 
long tag added to the Seafarer, are Christian, but 
these are additions quite out of harmony with the 
body of the poems. Where they were written is 
also unknown. Some allot them to the south of 
England and to the ninth century, others to Mercia. 
I believe them to be Northumbrian, and to belong 
to the beginning of the eighth century. Their 
scenery is northern, their temper is northern ; and 
even the Ruined Burs^, which mourns in solemn 



21 

verse the vanished glory of a desolate city, and 
is probably a description of the ruins of Bath, 
may have been written by a Mercian poet educated 
in the Northumbrian schools. Their most remark- 
able quality, independent of their heathen dwelling 
on Fate rather than on the will of God, is their 
love of Nature — and this too has a heathen tinge. 
They scarcely touch those softer aspects of the 
earth and sea and sky which poetry distinctly 
Christian loved to describe. They dwell on the 
tempest and the fury of the waves, on the hail 
lashing the broken fortress, on the thunder of the 
ice and the deathfulness of the snow, on the 
black caves in the forest and the cliffs white with 
the frost. There are half-a-dozen of the Riddles 
concerned with the terrible play of Nature in the 
northern seas, in the storm-wearied sky, and in 
the wild marsh and forest land. Our Nature- 
poetry of the nineteenth century is a reversion to 
this early English temper, and poetry of this kind 
in the eighth or the ninth century is unique in 
Teutonic literature of that time. Poetry of natural 
description is to be found also in Welsh and Irish 
song, and it is probable that the writing of it 
in England is to be traced to the influence on 
Northumbria and Mercia of the Celtic poets. But 
I also believe — and the fact that the form of the 
English Nature-poetry of this time is finer than 
any Celtic work of the kind may be due to this 
— that these northern poets were well acquainted 
with Virgil ; moreover, neither in Irish nor Welsh 
poetry of this period are there poems, such as the 
three Riddles on the storms, which treat of Nature 
alone, of Nature for her own sake. One of these is 
placed among the extracts. The finest of them is a 
long poem upon the Hurricane, impersonated as a 
giant rising from his prison under the earth to work 
his terrors on land and sea and in the sky ; and 
in each of these realms it is described with so 
much force, fire, and imagination that we know 



22 

the poet had watched from point to point the 
actual thing. 

Of the Elegies the Wanderer is the best, but the 
Seafarer is the most interesting. The Wanderef 
describes the mournful fates of men, the ruin of 
great towns and earls, friendships lost, departed 
glory, the winter night and snow settling on the 
world and on the heart of man. The Seafarer is 
perhaps a dramatic dialogue between an old and 
a young sailor, each telling of their terrible days 
at sea, yet each confessing the wild fascination of 
a sailor's life. The Husband^s Message, or rather 
the Lover's Message, calls, in exile, on the sweet- 
heart of the writer to join him in the foreign 
land where he waits for her : * Come in the spring, 
when the cuckoo calls from the cliff.' The Wife^s 
Complaint tells of her banishment by false tongues 
from her lord, and mourns her fate from the cave 
in the wood where she dwells, but mourns the most 
because she knows he loves her still, and suffers 
from want of her tenderness. These two last 
poems are the only poems in Old English which 
touch upon the passion and subtlety of human 
love. There may have been many more, but all 
the poetry of which we have to speak in the 
next section was written under the shadow of the 
monasteries, and the subject of love is absent. 

The Last Verses of the * Wanderer.' 

Whoso then these ruined Walls wisely has thought over, 
And this darkened life of man deeply has considered, 
Sage of mood within, oft remembers, far away, 
Slaughters cruel and uncounted, and cries out this 
Word— 
* Whither went the horse, whither went the man? 
Whither went the Treasure-giver ? 

What befell the seats of feasting? Whither fled the joys 

in hall? 
O, alas, the beaker bright ! O, alas, the byrnied warriors ! 
O, alas, the people's pride ! Ah, how perished is that 

Time! 



23 

Veiled beneath Night's helm it lies, as if it ne'er had 

been ! ' 
Left behind them, to this hour, by that host of heroes 

loved, 
Stands the Wall, so wondrous high, with Worm-images 

adorned ! 
Strength of ashen spears snatched away the Earls, 
Swords that for the slaughter hungered, and the Wyrd 

sublime ! 
See, the storms are lashing on the stony ramparts ; 
Sweeping down, the snow-drift shuts up fast the Earth — 
Woe and winter-terror when it wan ariseth ; 
Darkens then the dusk of Night, from the nor'rard 

driving 
Heavy drift of hail for the harm of heroes. 

All is full of trouble, all this realm of Earth ! 

Doom of weirds is changing all the world below the 

skies ; 
Here our fee is fleeting, here the friend is fleeting. 
Fleeting here is man, fleeting is the Kinsman ! 
All the Earth's foundation is become an idle thing. 



The Plough— Riddle xxii. 

Nitherward my neb is set, deep inclined I fare ; 
And along the ground I grub, going as he guideth me 
Who the hoary foe of holt is, and the Head of me. 
Forward bent he walks, he, the warden at my tail ; 
Through the meadows pushes me, moves me on and 

presses me. 
Sows upon my spoor. I myself in haste am then. 

Green upon one side is my ganging on ; 
Swart upon the other surely is my path. 



The Nightingale— Riddle ix. 

Many varied voices voice I through my mouth. 

Cunning are the notes I sing, and incessantly I change 

them. 
Clear I cry and loud ; with the chant within my head ; 
Holding to my tones, hiding not their sweetness. 
I, the Evening-singer old, unto earls I bring 



24 

Bliss within the burgs, when I burst along 
With a cadenced song. Silent in their dwellings 
They are sitting, bending forwards. Say what is my 
name. 

The Iceberg— Riddle xxxiv. 

Came a wondrous wight o'er the waves a- faring, 
Comely from his keel called he to the land. 
Loudly did he shout, and his laughter dreadful was, 
Full of terror to the Earth ! Sharp the edges of his 

swords. 
Grim was then his hate. He was greedy for the 

slaughter, 
Bitter in the battle work ; broke into the shield -walls. 
Rough and ravaging his way ; and a rune of hate he 

bound. 
Then, all-skilled in craft, he said, about himself, his 

nature — 
* Of the maiden kin is my mother known ; 
Of them all the dearest, so that now my daughter is 
Waxen up to mightiness.' 

Caedinon and the Christian Poetry. 

The distinctive Christian poetry begins before the 
date of the Elegies and the Nature-Riddles — in the 
seventh century, with Caedmon of Whitby. He is the 
first English poet whose name we know, . and it 
stands at the head of the long and glorious muster- 
roll of English singers. We have worn Apollo's 
laurel for 1200 years. Csedmon began to make 
verse, we may fairly saf, between 660 and 670. 
We know the date of his death — 680 ; and we are 
told that he was somewhat advanced in years when 
the gift of song came upon him. We first find 
him as a secular attendant of the monastery of 
Hild, an abbess of royal blood, who had set up 
her house of God on the lofty cliff which rises 
above the little harbour where the Esk meets the 
gray waters of the German Ocean. Whitby is its 
Danish name ; in the days of B^da it was called 
Streoneshalh. Caedmon was born a heathen if 
he was English ; but if, as some think from his 



25 

name, he was a Celt, he was born a Christian 
The monastery in which he afterwards became a 
monk was founded on the Celtic pattern — one of 
the children of lona — and he was early imbued 
with the Celtic spirit. Existing Celtic hymns, such 
as Colman's, may have been placed before him 
by the Irish monks as models for his poetry. 
But, for all this, his tongue was English and 
his poems were made in English. Whatever the 
Irish spirit did for him, the ground of his work 
was English. 

B^da tells the story of Caedmon's birth as a 
poet. One night, having the care of the cattle, he 
fell asleep in the stable, and One came to him and 
said, * Caedmon, sing me something.' ' I know not 
how to sing,' he replied, * and for this cause left I 
the feast.' * Yet,' said the divine visitant, ' you must 
sing to me.' * What shall I sing ? ' said Caedmon. 
* Sing,' the other replied, ' the beginning of created 
things.' And immediately Caedmon began a hymn 
in praise of the World's Upbuilder, and awakening, 
remembered what he had sung, and told the Town- 
Reeve of his gift, who brought him to Hild ; and, 
becoming a monk, he continued in the abbey till 
he died with joy and in peace, singing, day by 
day, all the Scripture history, and of the Judg- 
ment-day. ' Others after him,' said Baeda, ' tried 
to make religious poems, but none could compare 
with him.' 

His poetry had then made a school which was 
doing similar work to his when Baeda, fifty 
years after Caedmon's death, was finishing his 
Ecclesiastical History. Of what kind that work 
was we have no certain knowledge. The 
poems attributed to Caedmon by Junius in the 
manuscript called the Jiinian Ccedmon have been 
assigned by critics to different writers. Only one 
of them — Genesis A — is thought by a few to be 
possibly from his hand. If so, he wrote the thing 
in two distinct manners — partly in a mere para- 
phrase of the Biblical story, dull, unilluminated 



26 

by any imagination ; and partly in imaginative 
episodes, in which the Fall of the rebel angels, 
the Flood, the battles of Abraham, and the 
story of Hagar and of Isaac are imaginatively 
treated as heroic tales, in the manner of a 
heathen saga, and with English feeling. It is 
to be hoped that some day we shall get evidence 
to prove that these fine, bold episodes are from 
Ca^dmon's hand. The only verses we know to 
be his are transferred into Latin by Baeda, and 
we have a Northumbrian version of them in an 
old MS. of the Historia Ecclesiastica. They are 
the short hymn which he is said to have sung 
on awakening from his dream. Their hymnic form 
suggests to critics that Caedmon's work was mainly 
a series of heroic hymn-like lays on the subjects of 
the Old and New Testament, tinged with the colours 
of the Nature and the hero myths. It may be that 
we have the remains of one of these in the poem, 
portions of which are carved in runic letters on the 
Ruthwell Cross in Dumfriesshire. The lines sing of 
' Jesus, the yoiing Hero, who was God Almighty, 
who girded Himself and stepped up, full of courage, 
on the gallows for the sake of man.' And as He lies 
there, the Sacred Rood speaks : * Lifted on high, I 
bore the Lord of the heavenly realm, and trembled, 
all besteamed with blood. Pierced with spears and 
sore pained with sorrows, I beheld it all. They laid 
Him, limb-wearied, in the grave.' If this fragment 
be really Csedmon's work, it fills us with deep regret 
that we have lost his other poems — lost a poetry so 
close to the heroic manner, so filled with the spirit 
of that heathen vigour and passion which his life 
had seen and known. At any rate, we owe him a 
great debt. He bridged the river between the 
pagan and the Christian poetry. He showed to his 
folk how the new material of Christianity could be 
used by the bards of England. He made a great 
school of poetry. He made Cynewulf possible. 
He is the first EngHsh poet in our England. The 
royal line of England goes back to Cerdic, the still 



27 

more royal line of English poets goes back to 
Ca^dmon. 

The poetry of the School of Caedmon belongs to 
the end of the seventh and the beginning of the 
eighth century. Some of these poems are in the 
Exeter Book. They are short hymnic songs of praise. 
There is the Song of the Three Children^ adapted 
in the seventh century from the Apocrypha j and 
following it, the Prayer of Azarias. These were 
joined together, and furnished in later times with 
a conclusion, celebrating the deliverance of the 
three children. As the capacity for writing poetry 
grew, other forms were developed — poems of a half- 
epic character, and narrative poems with episodes 
like heathen lays inserted on a background of 
narrative. Of these two kinds of poetry, which 
ran together, the Exeter Book contains three — 
Genesis A^ Exodus^ and Daniel j and in the manu- 
script which contains Beowulf there is another — 
fudith. These probably belonged to Northumbria. 
Whether any long poems were written in the 
middle and south of England at this time we do 
not know ; but we do know that the family lay and 
the war-song were made and sung everywhere, and 
we have a pleasant story which tells how Ealdhelm, 
Bishop of Sherborne, who died in 709, was ac- 
customed on his preaching tours to stand like a 
gleeman on the bridge or the public way, and to 
sing songs, it may be his own, to the people flock- 
ing to the fairs, that he might draw them to him 
to hear the Word of God. This is the only thing 
we know of poetry in the south of England at this 
time. 

Genesis A is in the Junian manuscript. This 
manuscript was found by Archbishop Ussher, and 
sent by him to Francis Du Jon (Junius), who 
printed it at Amsterdam some time after 1650, and 
published it as the work of Caedmon, because its 
contents and its beginning agreed with Basda's 
account of C^dmon's work. It is now at the 
Bodleian, and is a small folio of 229 pages, in two 



28 

handwritings, the first of the tenth century, and 
illustrated with rude pictures. The first contains 
the Genesis^ the Exodus^ and the Daniel j the 
second the poems and fragments of poems gener- 
ally classed under the title of Christ and Satan. 
The Genesis is now divided into two parts, called 
A and B j and Genesis B and the Christ a7td Satan 
are now placed by the critics in the ninth and tenth 
centuries. 

Genesis A is the first of the three poems belong- 
ing to the Casdmon School. It consists of the first 
234 lines of the Genesis^ and of the lines from 852 
to the close. [The lines between 234 and 852 are 
Genesis B^ The early poem has many archaic 
elements, drawn from Teutonic ideas of the uni- 
verse — ancient Nature-myths. Its account of 
Abraham's war is alive with heathen lust of battle 
and vengeance ; and Abraham and his comrades 
speak like an English earl and his thanes in 
counsel. When the poet comes to gentler matters 
the spirit of the poem is changed. The Christian 
sentiment for soft landscape, its love of animals, 
and its tender domestic feeling touch the verse, 
in a pathetic mingling, with grace and delicacy. 
The account of the Creation tells of the Hollow 
Chasm, black in everlasting night — the vast 
Abrupt that was before the earth and stars were 
made ; then of the birth of ocean and of light, 
and of Day flying from the Dark, and of Morn- 
ing striding over earth and repelling the Night ; 
then of Man's creation, and of the winsome water 
washing the happy lands, and of earth made lovely 
with flowers — and the lines are full of the new 
kindliness which, unlike the heathen poetry, loved 
the beauty and softness of the earth and sky. 
Mere paraphrase follows, and then the poetic 
work is again taken up in the episode of the 
Flood, which is told by one who had seen the rain 
of tempest and heard the sounding of the sea, 
and, it may be, from the height of the abbey 
cliff, watched the sailors drive their barks into 



29 

the harbour. Another weary piece of paraphrase 
brings us to Abraham's story, his visit to Egypt, 
his war with the kings of the East, Hagar's 
dehverance, and the sacrifice of Isaac. The 
episode is well invented, and developed with great 
freedom from its original. The war is English 
war. Abraham acts and talks like an English 
earl ; the raid of the Eastern kings is like a raid of 
the Picts into Northumbria ; the tie of comradeship 
between Abraham and Aner, Mamre and Eshcol, is 
the same as that between Beowulf and his thanes, 
between Byrhtnoth and his followers ; the joy in 
the vengeance taken is fiercely northern. * No 
need,' cries Abraham, ' to fear any more the fight- 
ing rush of the Northmen. The carrion-birds, 
splashed with their blood and glutted with their 
corpses, are sitting now on the ledges of the hills.' 
Dialogue, which belongs to the whole of the 
episodes and gives them life and movement, is 
largely used in the story of Hagar, and almost 
suggests the drama. The sacrifice of Isaac is full 
of Teutonic touches — the bale-fire, the white-haired 
gold-giver girding his gray sword on him, the sun 
stepping upwards, the high wolds where the pyre 
is made, the vivid reality of a Northman's human 
sacrifice ; and the poem ends with the cry of 
God : * Pluck the boy away living from the pile of 
wood.' 

The Exodus is a complete whole. It is not 
troubled by paraphrase. The writer uses the greatest 
freedom with his subject, inventing, expanding, 
elaborately exalting his descriptions ; beginning 
with the death of the first-born, and ending with 
the triumph over Pharaoh. War and the array 
of battle give him great pleasure. He describes 
Pharaoh's host on their march with vigour and 
fire ; and the marshalling of Israel before the 
passage of the sea is full of poetic pleasure. In 
both passages, what an English host was like at 
the beginning of the eighth century is exactly 
detailed. The great war, however, is the war of 



30 

God against the Egyptians, His menace of their 
host on the march, His use against them of the 
blackness of tempest, the charging waves, the 
bloody flood. These were God's ancient swords. 
Many times the poet describes the overwhelm- 
ing. It is forcible — over forcible ; but young 
poetic life is in it. And the poem closes with 
the Song of victory and the plunder of the dead 
Egyptians. 

Judith^ in the manuscript which contains Beowulf^ 
is probably of the same cycle as the Exodus — a 
poem of the middle of the eighth century. Like 
the Exodus^ the poem is conceived as a Saga, 
to be sung before the warriors in camp as well as 
the monks in the refectory. It seems to have been 
in twelve books, for our manuscript contains a few 
lines of Section ix., and the whole of Sections x., 
xi., and xii. Section x. begins with the feast of 
Holofernes and the leading of Judith to his tent. 
He reels into his bed, drunken and shouting. 
' Avenge, O God !' she cries, * this burning at my 
heart ;' and the slaughter of the heathen chief 
is told with accurate delight. Book xi. brings 
us to Bethulia. Judith calls on all the burghers 
to arm for battle, and again English war is 
described. The warriors, bold as kings, run 
swiftly to the carnage, showers of spears fall on 
the foes, and the sword-play is fierce among the 
doomed. The gaunt wolf, the raven, and the 
dusky eagle rejoiced on that day. The twelfth 
book tells of the surprise of the Assyrian host, 
their flight, and the gathering of the spoil ; and 
Judith ends it with the praise of God. She 
towers over the whole, a noble and heroic figure, 
fit to receive and wear her spoil — the sword and 
helm, war-shirt and gems, of Holofernes. 

The Daniel closes this earliest cycle of Chris- 
tian poetry. It has no literary quality — a mere 
monkish paraphrase of the book as far as the 
feast of Belshazzar. The school of Caedmon had 
reached its decay. 



31 

The poetry of that school took its materials from 
the Old Testament. Christ was celebrated in it 
as the Creator, the great warrior who overthrew 
the rebel angels, the Egyptians, the Assyrians. 
It was eminently English ; it was eminently objec- 
tive. The personality of the poet does not intrude 
into the poems. 

The second school of Christian poetry is clearly 
divided from its predecessor. Cynewulf was its 
founder and its best artist. Its subjects are 
drawn from the New Testament and the martyr 
stories and legends of the Church of Rome. 
It is more Latin in feeling than English. Christ 
is celebrated, not as the God of the Jews 
who destroys His foes, but as the Saviour of 
the world of men for whom He dies, and the 
Judge who is to come. The note of it is a 
note of sorrow on the earth, but of joy to be 
in heaven. In the life to come is the rapture 
which fills the hymns of Cynewulf And, finally, 
the poetry almost ceases to be objective. The 
personal passion of the poet enters into every 
subject, and runs like a river through every 
poem. Even the natural description is touched 
with its colour. 



Abraham's Battle with the Elamites. 

So they rushed together. Loud were then the lances, 
Savage then the slaughter-hosts. Sadly sang the wan 

fowl, 
All her feathers dank with dew, 'midst the darting of the 

shafts, 
Hoping for the corpses. Then the heroes hastened 
In their mighty masses, and their mood was full of 

thought. 

Hard the play was there, 
Interchanging of death-darts, mickle cry of war ! 
Loud the clang of battle ! With their hands the heroes 
Drew from sheath their swords ring-hilted, 
Doughty of the edges. 



32 

In the camps was clashing 
Of the shields and shafts, of the shooters falling ; 
Brattling of the bolts of war ! Underneath the breast 

of men 
Grisly gripped the sharp-ground spears 
On the foemen's life. Thickly fell they there 
Where, before, with laughter, they had lifted booty. 

{Genesis, 11. 1982-2060.) 

The Approach of Pharaoh. 

Then they saw 
Forth and forward faring, Pharaoh's war array, 
Gliding on, a grove of spears ; glittering the hosts ! 
Fluttered there the banners, there the folk the march 

trod. 
Onwards surged the war, strode the spears along, 
Blickered the broad shields ; blew aloud the trumpets. 
Wheeling round in gyres, yelled the fowls of war, 
Of the battle greedy ; hoarsely barked the raven. 
Dew upon his feathers, o'er the fallen corpses ; 
Swart that chooser of the slain ! Sang aloud the wolves 
At the eve their horrid song, hoping for the carrion. 
Kindless were the beasts, cruelly they threaten ; 
Death did these march-warders, all the midnight through. 
Howl along the hostile trail — hideous slaughter of the 

host. 

Cynewulfi 

Cynewulf, with whom the second period of Old 
English poetry begins, was, in the opinion of a 
large number of critics, a Northumbrian, but some 
think him to have been Mercian. It is difficult 
to conceive how a poet so well acquainted with 
the sea and the coasts of the sea should have 
written in Mercia. A Mercian might have been 
acquainted with the sea, but not impassioned by 
it, as Cynewulf proves he is. Moreover, the sad- 
ness of his poetry, the constant regret for vanished 
glory, does not suit the life in Mercia at this time, 
when, from 718 to 796, ^thelbald and Offa had 
made Mercia the greatest kingdom in England ; 
but does suit the life in Northumbria when, from 



33 

7 SO to 790, that kingdom had fallen into anarchy 
and decay. There are other critics who place him 
much later than the eighth century. 

We know the name of the poet, and something 
of his life and character. He has signed his name 
in runic letters to four of his poems. His riddHng 
commentary on these runes gives personal details 
of parts of his life. His youth, he says, *was 
radiant.' He was sometimes attached as a Scop 
to a chieftain ; sometimes he played the part of 
a wandering singer. He had received many gifts 
for his singing, then fallen into need ; had known 
the griefs of love, and lived the wild life of a 
young poet ; so that, when looking back on his 
youth, he thinks of himself as stained with many 
sins. Then the scenery of his life changed. Some 
heavy misfortune fell on him, and he tells us then 
that his repentance was deep. In his sorrow for 
sin he had a vision of the Cross, and felt the 
blessing of forgiveness. His 'gift of song' that 
he had lost in his remorse and fear returned 
to him, and then he began to write his Christian 
poetry. In that poetry we read his sensitive, im- 
passioned, self-contemplative character. He is as 
personal as Milton or Cowper ; but, unlike Cowper, 
he passes from religious sorrow into religious peace, 
and the poems written in his old age are full of 
contented aspiration for the better kingdom. 

The Riddles, it is generally understood, contain 
a great deal of his early work before his con- 
version. If they are his, they tell us that he 
knew some Latin and had lived in monasteries, 
probably as a scholar ; was a lover of natural 
scenery, of animals and birds ; was eager in the 
works of war, and had sung the sword, the spear, 
the war-shirt, and the bow ; had watched with an 
observant eye the village and the town on the 
edge of the woods, the river, the mill, the loom, 
the gardens, the domestic animals. Moreover, he 
had seen and described, with a young man's joy 
in the tempest, the cliffs and shore white with 



34 

the leaping waves, the ships labouring in the 
mountainous sea, the folk-halls burning in the gale, 
the woods ravaged by the lightning and the black 
rain. All this and much more is celebrated in the 
Riddles. With his love of impersonation, he per- 
sonified far more than his riddle-making prede- 
cessors, Ealdhelm, Symphosius, and Tatwine, the 
subjects of his enigmas. When he makes the 
Iceberg ride like a Viking over the waves, and 
charge, breaking his enemies' ships, with fierce 
singing and laughing, to the shore, we feel that he 
could scarce carry further imaginative personation 
of natural phenomena. Yet he is so particular 
in observation of Nature that he devotes three 
separate Riddles to the description of three several 
kinds of tempest, and they are done with imagi- 
native intensity, nor is the phrase exaggerated. 

The Riddles are in the Exeter Book^ in three 
divisions. There are ninety-five of them, but these 
are combined into eighty-nine. There were prob- 
ably a hundred. Those written by Ealdhelm and 
others before Cynewulf's time were in Latin ; these 
are in English verse, with the exception of the 
eighty-sixth, which is in Latin. As the name 
Lupus is in it, it is supposed that Cynewulf thus 
recorded his name. 

When we meet Cynewulf again he is all 
changed. He has suffered sore trouble, and is 
overwhelmed with sorrow for sin ; and we possess, 
mingled up with the runes of his name, his record 
of misery in the Juliana^ the first, probably, of 
his signed poems. Here, as an example both of 
the fashion of his signature and of his penitence, 
is the passage : 

Sorrowful are wandering 
C and Y and N ; for the King is wrathful, 
God of conquests giver. Then, beflecked with sins, 
E and V and U must await in fear 
What, their deeds according, God will doom to them 
For their life's reward. L and F are trembling, 
Waiting, sad with care. 



35 

The Juliana is in the Exeter Book^ and Cyne- 
wulf has worked up the legend of this virgin and 
martyr in a series of episodes so abrupt, so full 
of repetition, with so awkward a hand, that it 
plainly suggests a beginner's work in a new 
method. From a wild young poet to a sad peni- 
tent, from versing of war and love and nature to 
versing a pious legend, are not transitions which 
are easily made, nor is the work done in such a 
transition imaginative. We may say the same of 
the first part of the St Guthlac^ which he has 
not signed, but which we think was written in this 
transition period. It rests on traditions of the 
saint, and is a lifeless piece of writing. 

In the Crist^ which is the next signed poem, 
Cynewulf has passed through this transition time, 
and attained ease, life, and eagerness in his art ; 
recovered his imaginative power, his passion, and 
his descriptive force. Here, for the first time in 
his Christian work, he reaches originality, his true 
method and fit material. The Crist is not the 
translation of a legend ; it is freshly invented ; 
and Cynewulf is always at his best when he 
is inventing, not imitating. The sorrow for his 
sinful life continues, but it is now mingled with 
the peace which comes of realised forgiveness. ' I 
have sailed on wind-swept seas,' he cries, 'over 
fearful surges, but now my ship is anchored in 
the haven to which the Spirit-Son of God has 
brought me home.' 

The Crist is in the Exeter Book. It was scattered 
in fragmentary pieces through this book, but has 
now been brought together. It consists of three 
parts. The first celebrates the Nativity, the second 
the Ascension, the third the Day of Judgment, and 
the poem closes at line 1663. The series of can- 
tatas into which the first part is set are remarkable 
not only for the rushing praise with which each of 
them ends, but also for a dramatic dialogue, almost 
like the dialogue in the Miracle-Plays, between a 
choir of men and women from Jerusalem and Mary 



36 

and Joseph. It reads like a prediction of the 
medieval mysteries. In the second part there is 
a finely conceived scene, set in the vast of space, of 
Christ returning to His Father's home, leading all 
the Old Testament saints up out of Hades, and of 
the meeting with Him and them of the host of 
heaven who have poured from the gates to wel- 
come the new-comers. The third part of the poem 
begins with the gathering of the angels and the 
saints on Mount Zion. A noble description follows 
of the Angels of the four trumpets summoning 
the dead. Christ appears in a blazing light, and 
the universe melts in conflagration. Only Mount 
Zion remains, and the throne, and the dead, small 
and great, before it. Then, with its root on the 
mount and its top in heaven, a mighty Cross is 
upraised, wet with the blood of the King, but 
so brilliant that all shade is drowned in its 
crimson light. This fine conception is Cynewulf s 
own, and in its description, and in that of the 
great conflagration, the power he showed in the 
Riddles reaches its highest point. The poem ends 
with a picture of the saints in the perfect land. 

The Crist was followed by the Ph(£nix and the 
second part of the Guthlac. Neither of these 
are signed by Cynewulf, but the majority of 
scholars allot them to him. The Ph(jenix is in the 
Exeter Book^ and its source is a Latin poem by 
Lactantius. This original is left at line 380 ; the 
rest is an allegory of the Resurrection, in which 
not only Christ but all the souls of the just are 
symbolised by the rebirth of the Phoenix. The first 
part describes the paradisiacal land — the equiva- 
lent of the Celtic land of eternal youth — in which 
the Phoenix dwells, and the description is famous 
in Old English work. Then the enchanted life 
of the bird is told with all Cynewulfs love of 
animals, of lovely woodland places, of the glory 
of the sunrising and the sunset, and of sweet sing- 
ing ; and then the flight of the bird to the Syrian 
land, its burning, its resurrection, and the return 



37 

to its Paradise for another thousand years. The 
allegory follows. 1 1 is plain from the joyousness, 
the exultation of this poem, and its rapturous 
praise, that Cynewulf had fully recovered from his 
spiritual misery, and was happy in faith and hope. 

The second part of Guthlac^ which Cynewulf 
now added, as I think, to the first part, has for 
its subject the death of Guthlac, and is told in 
the manner of the saga stories. I have conjec- 
tured that Cynewulf, who in the previous poems 
had avoided the heroic and mythical terms of the 
heathen poetry, as he would be likely to do after 
his conversion from a life he held in horror, now 
felt his religious being so firmly set that he 
allowed himself to recur to the poetic fashions 
of his youth. At any rate, in this poem and in the 
later poems he sings the Christian battle with 
death, the victory of Jesus over evil, the legends 
of the Church, with a full use of the old heroic 
strain, of the Nature-myths, and of the terms of 
heathen war. Guthlac stands on his hill, like a 
Viking, as if on Holmgang, to meet the assaults of 
Satan and his * smiths of sin ;' to stand against 
Death, that greedy warrior ; and dies in triumph. 
A pillar of light rises from his corpse, and the 
heavenly host bursts into rapturous singing to 
welcome him. All England trembles with joy. 
It is an unfinished poem, but there is no better 
work in Old English poetry. 

A fragment of a Descent into Hell also belongs 
to this poet, and is written with the same trick of 
dialogue and the same enthusiasm as the Crist^ 
and in the same heroic manner as the Guthlac. 
This poem also is not signed. 

There are two signed poems yet to be spoken 
of, and two unsigned, which many critics have 
allotted to Cynewulf The two signed poems are 
the Fates of the Apostles and the Elene, The two 
unsigned are the Andreas and the Dream of the 
Rood. No discussion has gathered round the 
Elene. It is plainly Cynewulfs. A great deal 



38 

of discussion has gathered round the Dream of the 
Rood. Again and again it has been claimed for 
Cynewulf; again and again the claim has been 
denied. The same may be said with regard to 
the Andreas. As to the Fates of the Apostles.^ 
most people think the signature makes it plainly 
his ; but the date of its production and whether it 
stands alone or is an epilogue to the Andreas 
are matters still in discussion. The best thing 
this short treatise can do is to leave these critical 
matters, and to speak of the poems themselves. 
If the Fates of the Apostles be bound up with 
the Andreas^ and if Cynewulf wrote the Andreas.^ 
it is here, after the second part of Guthlac^ that 
we may best place these poems. 

The Fates of the Apostles is in the Vercelli Book^ 
and the personal passage (if it really belong to that 
poem) contains Cynewulfs name. The work of 
the apostles is told as if it were the expedition 
of English ^Ethelings against their foes. ' Thomas 
bore the rush of swords ; Simon and Thaddeus 
were quick in the sword-play.' This heroic cry is 
equally strong in the Andreas ; but the manner 
of the whole poem does not resemble the other 
work of Cynewulf. It has many lines which recall 
Beowulf and the writer seems to have read that 
poem. If it is by an imitator of Cynewulf, the 
imitator was capable of as good work as Cynewulf ; 
and he loves the grim sea-coasts and the stormy 
sea as much as Cynewulf. It would be pleasant 
to think that there were two such good men at 
this time writing together. 

The A7idreas is in the Vercelli Book., and tells 
from the Acts of St A?tdrew and St Matthew, 
of which there is a Greek manuscript at Paris, 
the adventures of the two apostles among the 
Mermedonians, a cannibal Ethiopian tribe. The 
apostles, the angels, even Christ Himself, are all 
English in speech, and the scenery is English. 
There is, of course, nothing English in the original. 
The change is a deliberate addition made by 



39 

the writer. As literature, the irnportant part of 
the poem is the voyage of St Andrew and his 
thanes with Christ and two angels, their conversa- 
tion, the description of the storm, their landing on 
the coast. All this is done in heroic fashion ; the 
breath of the sea fills it ; the natural description 
is terse and observant, and the talk is imagina- 
tively treated. We feel as if we were sailing in 
a merchant-boat of the eighth century between 
Whitby and the Tyne. Landing, Andrew delivers 
Matthew, suffers three days' martyrdom, and then, 
after a mighty flood and tempest of fire has 
destroyed his foes, converts the rest, founds a 
church, and sails away. 

There is no doubt of the authorship of the 
Elene^ which Cynewulf wrote when he was 'old 
and ready for death in my frail tabernacle.' It 
is the last of the signed poems. He was now a 
careful artist. ' I've woven craft of words,' he 
says, 'culled them out, sifted night by night my 
thoughts.' He then recalls the story of his life 
while he signs his name in runes. It is the chief 
biographical passage in his work, and it ends with 
a fine description of the storm-wind hunting in 
the sky. The poem is in the Vercelli Book — 
1320 lines. The subject is the Finding of the 
True Cross by the Empress Helena. The battle 
of Constantine with the Huns and the voyage of 
Helena are the best parts of the poem. They 
are insertions by Cynewulf into the Latin life of 
Cyriacus, Bishop of Jerusalem, which (in the Acta 
Sanctorum^ May 4) is the source of the poem. 
The battle is done with the full heroic spirit. The 
sea-voyage breathes of his delight in the doings 01 
ships and of the ocean. The ancient saga-terms 
strengthen and animate his verse, and the poet 
seems to write like a young man. His metrical 
movement is steadier here than in the other poems. 
He uses almost invariably the short epic line into 
the usage of which English poetry had now drifted. 
Rhyme, also, and assonance are not infrequent. 



40 

The poets, it is plain, had now formulated rules 
for their art. Had Northumbrian poetry lasted, it 
might have become as scientific as the Icelandic. 

The last poem belonging to Cynewulf or his 
school is the Dream of the Rood, which is found in 
the Vercelli Book. Its authorship is unknown, 
but many scholars give it to Cynewulf. I believe 
it to be his last poem, his farewell ; and that he 
worked it up from that early ' Lay of the Rood ' 
written, it is supposed, by Caedmon, and a portion of 
which is quoted on the Ruth well Cross. Cynewulf 
wished to record before he died the vision of the 
Cross which converted him. He found this poem 
of Caedmon's, and wrought it up into a description 
of his vision, inserting the * long epic lines ' in 
which it was written. Then he wrote a beginning 
and end of his own in his ' short epic ' line. This 
theory — it is no more — accounts for the difficulties 
of the poem. 

It begins by describing how he saw at the dead 
of night a wondrous Tree, adorned with gems, 
moist with blood ; and how, as he looked on it, 
heavy-hearted with sin, it began to tell its story. 

I was hewed down in the holt, and wrought into 
shape, and set on a hill, and the Lord of all folk 
hastened to mount on me, the Hero who would save 
the world. Nails pierced me ; I was drenched with the 
Hero's blood, and all Creation wept around me. Then 
His foes and mine took Almighty God from me, and men 
made His grave, and sang over Him a sorrowful lay. 

The old poem, thus worked up into Cynewulf's 
new matter, may be distinguished by its long epic 
lines from the newer matter, which is written in the 
short epic line. When the dream is finished, Cyne- 
wulf ends with a long passage so like the rest of 
his personal statements, so steeped in his individu- 
ality as we know it from his signed poems, so 
pathetic and so joyous, that it is hard to understand 
how the poem can be attributed to any one but 
Cynewulf. * Few friends are left me now,' he 



41 

says ; * they have fared away to their High Father. 
And I bide here, waiting till He on whose Rood 
I looked of old shall bring me to the happy place 
where the High God's folk are set at the evening 
meal.' And with that the poetry and the life of 
Cynewulf close. 

The time is coming when his name will be more 
highly honoured among us, and his poetry better 
known. He had imagination ; he anticipated, at a 
great distance, the Nature-poetry of the nineteenth 
century, especially the poetry of the sea ; his personal 
poetry, full of religious passion both of penitence 
and joy, makes him a brother of the many poets 
who in England have written well of their own heart 
and of God in touch with it. His hymnic passages 
of exultant praise ought to be translated and loved 
by all who cherish the Divine praise which from 
generation to generation has been so nobly sung 
by English poets. The heroic passages in his 
poems link us to our bold heathen forefathers, 
and yet are written by a Christian. Their spirit is 
still the spirit of England. But his greatest hero 
was Jesus Christ. Cynewulf was, more than any 
other Old English poet, the man who celebrated 
Christ as the Healer of men, and, because He was 
the Healer, the Hero of the New Testament. 

The other remains of English poetry which we 
possess in the Exeter and Vercelli Books^ and 
which were written before the revival of literature 
under Alfred, belong more to the history of criti- 
cism than literature. They were written at various 
dates during the eighth and ninth centuries. For 
our purpose it will almost suffice to name the best 
of them. One of them is a short Physiologus^ a 
description of three animals — the Panther, the 
Whale, and the Partridge — followed by a religious 
allegory based on the description. The Panther 
symbolises Christ, the Whale the devil. There 
are two didactic poems, the Address of a Father 
to a Son^ and of the Lost Soul to its Body. There 
are two other poems on the Gifts of Men and the 



42 

Fates of Men^ the latter of which treats its subject 
with so much originaUty that it has been given 
to Cynewulf. Both contain passages which tell us 
a good deal about the arts and crafts of the 
English, and about various aspects of English 
scenery. The Gnomic Verses — folk proverbs and 
maxims, short descriptions of human life and of 
natural events — are in four collections, three in 
the Exeter Book and one in the Cotton MS. 
at Cambridge. Many of these are interesting. 
Some have come down from heathen times ; some 
are quotations from the poets ; others tell of war, 
of courts, of women, of games, of domestic life. 
They would have interested Alfred ; and it is 
probable that, collected at York, they were edited 
in Wessex in Alfred's time. The Ru?te Song 
is an alphabet of the Runes, with attached 
verses, such as we still make at the present 
day on the letters of the alphabet. There are 
two dialogues between Solo7non and Saturnus^ 
in which Christian wisdom in Solomon and the 
heathen wisdom of the East in Saturnus contend 
together in question and answer. Such dialogues 
became frequent in medieval literature, but changed 
their form. Marculf takes the place of Saturn, and 
represents the uneducated peasant or mechanic, 
whose rustic wit often gets the better of the king 
and the scholar. But there is no trace of this 
rebellion against Church and State in the English 
dialogues. With them we may close the poetry 
of the ninth century. A few years after the death 
of Cynewulf the Danish terror began. Literature 
decayed ; men had not the heart to write poetry ; 
and when, shortly after 867, the 'army' (which 
had already ravaged East Anglia and the greater 
part of Mercia) stormed York and destroyed every 
abbey and seat of learning from the Humber to 
the Forth, the poetry of Northumbria passed away. 
We may say that the farewell of Cynewulf in the 
Dream of the Rood was the dirge of Northumbrian 
song. 



43 

At the Judgment-Day. 

Deep creation thunders, and before the Lord shall go 

Hugest of upheaving fires o'er the far-spread earth ! 

Hurtles the hot flame, and the heavens burst asunder, 

All the firm-set flashing planets fall out of their places. 

Then the sun that erst o'er the elder world 

With such brightness shone for the sons of men 

Black-dark now becomes, changed to bloody hue. 

And the moon alike, who to man of old 

Nightly gave her light, nither tumbles down : 

And the stars also shower down from heaven. 

Headlong through the roaring lift, lashed by all the 

winds. 

(From the Crist.) 

The Bliss of Heaven. 

There, is angels' song ; there, enjoyment of the blest ; 
There, beloved Presence of the Lord Eternal, 
To the blessed brighter than the beaming of the Sun ! 
There is love of the beloved, life without the end of 

death ; 
Merry there man's multitude ; there unmarred is youth 

by eld ; 
Glory of the hosts of Heaven, health that knows not 

pain ; 
Rest for righteous doers, rest withouten strife, 
For the good and blessed ! Without gloom the day. 
Bright and full of blossoming ; bliss that 's sorrowless ; 
Peace all friends between, ever without enmity ; 
Love that envieth not, in the union of the saints, 
For the happy ones of Heaven ! Hunger is not there 

nor thirst. 
Sleep nor heavy sickness, nor the scorching of the Sun ; 
Neither cold nor care ; but the happy company, 
Sheenest of all hosts, shall enjoy for aye 
Grace of God their King, glory with their Lord. 

(From the Crist.) 

St Guthlac dies and is received into Heaven. 

Then out-streamed a Light 
Brightest that of beaming pillars ! All that Beacon fair. 
All that heavenly glow round the holy home, 
Was up-reared on high, even to the roof of Heaven, 
From the field of earth, like a fiery tower, 



Seen beneath the sky's expanse, sheenier than the sun, 
Glory of the glorious stars ! Hosts of angels sang 
Loud the lay of Victory ! In the lift the ringing sound 
Now was heard the heaven under, raptures of the Holy 

Ones! 
So the blessed Burgstead was with blisses filled, 
With the sweetest scents, and with skiey wonders. 
With the angels' singing, to its innermost recesses ; 
Heirship of the Holy One ! 

More onelike it was. 
And more winsome there, than in world of ours 
Any speech may say ; how the sound and odour, 
How the clang celestial, and the saintly song 
Heard in Heaven were — high-triumphant praise of God, 
Rapture following rapture. 

All our island trembled. 
All its Field-floor shook. 

(From the Guthlac.) 

Latin Writers liefore ^Elfred. 

When Augustine landed in Thanet in 597 and 
made Canterbury the first Christian town, he 
brought with him, to add to the development of 
English literature, the power, the wisdom, the amal- 
gamating force, and the long traditions of Rome. 
But at first, though the Roman missionaries in- 
fluenced the English thought, they did not use 
the English language. All that they wrote they 
wrote in Latin. The Celtic Church encouraged 
the. English to shape their thought and feeling 
in their own tongue ; the Roman Church dis- 
couraged this ; and the south of England, where 
Rome was supreme as a teacher, did not till the 
days of Alfred produce any important literature 
in English. 

The Latin literature of the south began with 
Theodore of Tarsus, who was made Archbishop of 
Canterbury in 669. Benedict Biscop, a Northum- 
brian scholar, came with him from Rome ; and 
Benedict, going to his home, was the proper founder 
of Latin literature in Northumbria. Hadrian, Theo- 
dore's deacon, joined in 671, and with his help 



45 

Theodore set on foot the school of Canterbury, 
which soon became the centre of southern learning. 
Wessex and Kent now produced their own scholars, 
and their bishops were men who loved and 
nourished education. Daniel of Winchester was 
a wise assistant of Baeda ; but the man who best 
represents the knowledge and literature of the 
south was Ealdhelm, who, educated by Mailduf, 
an Irishman, and also at Canterbury, became 
Abbot of Malmesbury and Bishop of Sherborne. 
He may have helped to compile the Laws of Ine^ 
King of Wessex, and he made some English 
songs ; but his chief work was in Latin, and it 
was the Latin of a scholar who knew the Roman 
classics. He wrote Latin verse with ease, and trans- 
lated into hexameters the stories of his prose trea- 
tise De laudibus Virginitatis. His Latin Riddles 
sent to Aldfrith of Northumbria were used by 
Cynewulf. His correspondence was extensive, and 
the letters to English and Welsh kings, to monas- 
teries abroad, are as honourable to him as his letters 
to the abbesses and nuns, who in those days had 
learnt Latin, are charming, gay, and tender. His 
style is swollen, fantastic, and self-pleased, but the 
goodness and grace of the man shine through it. 
He was the last of the Wessex scholars who at this 
time did any literary work. 

Ability and intelligence in Wessex were more em- 
ployed in organisation of the Church and in mis- 
sionary enterprise than in writing. Theodore brought 
the whole Christianity of England into unity. Wini- 
fried or Boniface, who brought Central Germany 
into obedience to the Roman See ; Willibald, one 
of our first pilgrims to Palestine ; LuUus, Arch- 
bishop of Mainz, who has left us a correspon- 
dence which proves his influence over the growth 
of Christianity and learning in England and Eu- 
rope, were all West Saxons. But after the middle 
of the eighth century active literary life died in 
Wessex, and when Alfred came to the throne in 
871, there was not a single priest left who could 



46 

understand their service books or put them into 
English. 

The history of Latin literature in the Mid- 
England kingdom of Mercia is even of less im- 
portance than it is in Wessex. Under ^thelbald 
the country seems to have won a reputation for 
learning ; and Ecgwin, Bishop of Worcester, is 
said to be our first autobiographer. The Life of St 
Guthlac, written by Felix of Crowland for an East 
Anglian king, in outpuffing Latin, is the only work 
we know of. But vEthelbald and his successor 
Offa were munificent to monasteries ; and the 
school at Worcester was the last refuge of learn- 
ing, when its cause was lost all over England in 
the ninth century. 

The career of Latin literature in Northumbria 
was more continuous and more important than it 
was in Wessex or Mercia. The names of many of 
its scholars were known over the world, and are 
famous to this day. Northumbrian scholarship 
founded a great school, almost a university, at 
York, from which flowed the learning which, 
received and cherished by Charles the Great, 
produced an early Renaissance in Europe. The 
story of its rise and its fall belongs to York. The 
story of its growth and development belongs to 
Wearmouth and J arrow. 

Christianity reached York in the year 627, when 
Paullinus baptised Eadwine. But after Eadwine's 
death Northumbria relapsed into heathenism, 
Paullinus fled, and Latin literature was stifled in 
its birth. Literature and religion again took fresh 
life under Oswald in 634, but they were now in 
Celtic, not in Roman hands. The monasteries 
set up were ruled by Celtic monks from lona ; 
the bishops came from the same place ; the kings 
and princes of the Northumbrian house were, for 
the most part, educated at lona, spoke Irish, and 
knew the poetry and learning of Ireland. And the 
Irish, accustomed to praise God and their heroes 
and saints in their own tongue, encouraged the 



47 

Northumbrians to write in their own tongue. The 
first literature of Northumbria was in EngHsh. 

Rome was naturally unsatisfied with this pre- 
dominance of the Celtic Church ; Northumbria 
must be drawn into the Latin fold ; and Theodore, 
Wilfrid, and others, with Prince Alchfrith, fought 
their battle so well that in 664, at the Synod of 
Whitby, Northumbria joined the Latin Church. 
And now, though the Celtic influence lasted for 
many years, Latin learning, which had begun in 
Ripon and Hexham, took deep root in the north. 
Benedict Biscop, who had been at Rome with 
Theodore, built in 674 the monastery of St Peter 
at Wearmouth, and in 682 the sister house at 
Jarrow. He and the large libraries he collected 
for these abbeys were the real foundation of 
the Latin literature and learning of the north. 
Scholars and writers soon began to multiply. 
Wilfrid's .biography — the first written in England 
— was done by his friend Eddius Stephanus about 
709. The Life of St Cuthbert was written at 
Lindisfarne. Wilfrid's closest friend, Acca, Bishop 
of Hexham, increased the library which John of 
Beverley had ministered to. These are the chief 
names of the early Latin writers of the north. 

But the learning was scattered. It was gathered 
together and generalised by Baeda of Jarrow. He 
is the master of the time, and his books became 
not only the sources of English, but of European 
learning. To this day his name is revered ; he is 
still called the * Venerable Bede ; ' all the science, 
rhetoric, grammar, theology, and historical know- 
ledge of the past which he could attain he 
absorbed, edited, and published. He increased 
in his Homilies and Connnentaries the religious 
literature of the world ; he made delightful biog- 
raphies, and he wrote the Ecclesiastical History 
of the English Nation with skill and charm. It is 
our best authority. His first books, on the scien- 
tific studies of the time, were written between 700 
and 703. They were followed by a primer of the 



48 

history of the world — De sex cetatibus ScbcuU-, 
707 ; by the Commentaries on almost all the books 
of the Old and New Testaments, and these 
range over many years after 709 ; by the Lives 
of Cuthbert and the Abbots of Wearmouth and 
J arrow ^ j 16-20 ; and by the De Temporum ratione 
in 726. The Ecclesiastical History was finished 
in 731, and his last work, the Letter to Egbert^ 
was done in the year of his death, 735. These 
thirty-five years were thus filled with that learn- 
ing and teaching and writing in which he had 
always great delight ; and the little cell at Jarrow, 
whence he rarely stirred, was continually visited by 
men of many businesses and of all ranks in life. 
He kept in touch with all the monasteries of 
England, and with many in Europe. Even so far 
away as Rome he had scholars who worked for 
him among the archives. His greatest book is 
the Ecclesiastical History. He took so much 
pains to make it accurate, and to write nothing 
without consulting original and contemporary 
authorities, that the modern historical school 
claim him as their own. He shows in the book 
that power of choice and rejection of material 
so necessary for a historian ; and, what chiefly 
concerns us here, he filled it with a literary charm 
and beauty of statement when the subject per- 
mitted this self-indulgence. It is here that his 
personality most appears ; that we feel his happy, 
gentle, loving, and simple nature. His character 
adorns his style. The stories which embellish the 
book have a unique clearness and grace, a vivid 
grasp of character, a human tenderness, which 
makes us feel at times as if we were present with 
him in his room at Jarrow and listening to his 
charitable voice. Cuthbert, one of his pupils, gives 
an account of his fair death in his cell among his 
books ; and it is pleasant to think that the last 
work on which he was engaged on the day of his 
departure was a translation into English of the 
Gospel of St John, and that almost his last speech 



49 

was the making of a few English verses, for, 
indeed, he was learned in English songs. (There 
is a translation from Basda's History at page 53.) 

The seat of learning at Baeda's death was trans- 
ferred from Jarrow to York, where Ecgberht, 
Baeda's pupil, became an archbishop. The school 
he established at York may almost be termed a 
university. The education given was in all the 
branches of learning then known, in Ethica, 
Physica, and Logica. The library was the largest 
and the best outside of Rome, and was more useful 
than that at Rome. The arts were not neglected. 
The Latin Fathers ; the Roman poets, gram- 
marians, orators ; the Natural History of Pliny, 
some of the Greek Fathers, and the Scriptures, 
were studied by a host of scholars from Ireland, 
Italy, Gaul, Germany, and England. When 
Ecgberht died ^Elberht succeeded him, and 
with Alcuin's help increased the library and de- 
veloped the education given in the schools. In 
770 York and its library and schools was the centre 
of European learning. ^Iberht's greatest friend 
was Alcuin (Eng. Ealhwine), the finest scholar 
York produced, and the last. His classical was 
as good as his patristic learning. His style has 
earned him the name of the Erasmus of his cen- 
tury. He loved Virgil so well that pious persons- 
reproached him for it. His reputation came ta 
the ears of Charles the Great, who was then start- 
ing the education of his kingdoms ; and Alcuin, 
who had met Charles at Pavia about 780, and again 
at Parma in 781, left England — though he revisited 
it in 790-92 — to remain on the Continent till his 
death in the abbey of St Martin of Tours in 804. 
He left many books behind him — learned, theo- 
logical, and virtuous. Of his Latin poems, that 
dedicated to the history of the great men of the 
school of York is the best. The Letters — more 
than three hundred — which he wrote to Charles and 
to most of the important personages in England and 
Europe, have the best right to the name of litera- 



50 

ture, and prove how wide was his influence, and 
how useful his work to the centuries that followed. 
He brought all the scholarship of England to the 
empire of the greatest man in Europe, whose 
power sent it far and wide. And he did this at the 
very time when its doom had begun to fall upon it in 
England. Alcuin himself heard of the ravaging of 
Lindisfarne by the Vikings in 793, and of the attack 
in the following year on Wearmouth, and cried out 
with pity and sorrow. The years that followed 
were years of decay. Northumbria was the prey 
of anarchy from 780 to 798. The six years of quiet 
that followed were years in which the school of 
York, weakened by Alcuin's absence, sickened and 
failed. In 827 Ecgberht of Wessex put an end to 
the separate kingdom of Northumbria. In 867 the 
Danish * army ' invaded the north, conquered York, 
settled there, and destroyed every abbey, both in 
Deira and Bernicia. Bishoprics, libraries, schools 
were all swept away. A little learning may have 
crept on in York, for the town was not destroyed, 
and it again flourished under Danish rule. Only 
one poor school of learning remained in that part of 
Mercia which w^as finally saved by ^Elfred from the 
Danes. Worcester was the last refuge of the faded 
learning of Northumbria ; and when Alfred began 
the revival of education in England, collected the 
old poetry, attempted to restore monastic leisure 
and scholarship, and himself, having learnt Latin, 
originated English prose by the translation of Latin 
books, it was from Worcester that he fetched the 
only Englishmen who could help him in his work. 

iElfred. 

Alfred, whose character was even greater than 
his renown as warrior, ruler, and lawgiver, was also 
a king in English literature. With him, at Win- 
chester, began the prose-writing of England. His 
books were chiefly translations, but they were 
interspersed with original work which reveals to 



51 

us his way of thinking, the temper of his soul, 
the interests of his searching inteUigence, and his 
passion for teaching his people all that could then 
be known of England, of the history of the world, 
of religion, and of the Divine Nature. They ap- 
pealed to the clergy, to the people, to scholars, to 
the warriors and sailors of England. Their aim 
was the education of his countrymen. 

Bom at Wantage in 849, he was the youngest 
son of ^thelwulf, and the grandson of the great 
Ecgberht. Rome, whither he went at the age of 
four years, and then again when he was six years 
old, made its deep impression on him. He stayed 
on his return at the court of Charles the Bald, and 
heard, no doubt, of the education which Charles the 
Great had given to the empire, for when he under- 
took a similar task in England he followed the 
methods and the practice of the emperor. When 
he arrived in England he sought for teachers, but 
found- none. When he was twenty years old he 
heard with indignant sorrow of the destruction of 
all learning in England by the Danes ; and the 
lover of learning as well as the patriot was 
whetted into wrath when, on the height of Ash- 
down, he and his brother ^Ethelred drove the 
Danes down the hill with a pitiless slaughter. Not 
long after this battle he became King of Wessex in 
871. The work by which he made his kingdom 
belongs to history. It was only in 887 that he 
began his literary labour in a parenthesis of quiet. 
But he had made preparations for it beforehand. 
He had collected round him whatever scholars 
were left in England. They were few, — Werfrith, 
Bishop of Worcester ; Denewulf, of the same town ; 
Plegmund, vEthelstan, and Werwulf, all three from 
Mercia. With these he exhausted England. Then 
he sent to Flanders for Grimbald, whom he made 
Abbot of Winchester ; and to Corvei in West- 
phaHa for John the Old Saxon, whom he placed 
over his monastic house at Athelney. But his 
closest comrade in this work was Ass«r of St 



52 

David's, whom he induced to stay with him for six 
months in the year, who taught him Latin, and 
whose Latin Life of the king is, with all its inter- 
polations and errors, our best authority. The first 
thing they did together was Alfred's Hand-book. 
When Asser quoted or ^Elfred read out of the Bible 
or the Fathers any passage which interested the 
king, it was written down and translated into 
English in the note-book which the king kept in his 
breast. It was a book, then, of religious extracts, 
with here and there an illustration or a remark of 
Alfred's added in his own words. This Hand-book^ 
begun in November 887, was set forth for the use 
of the people in English in 888. The loss of it is a 
great misfortune. 

The collection of the laws of ^thelberht, Ine, and 
Offa, with laws of his own, into a Law-book was the 
next work yElfred undertook, and it was probably 
completed in 888. But the work of collection had 
most likely been begun in 885 or 886, for William 
of Malmesbury says that it was composed amid the 
noise of arms and the braying of the trumpets — 
that is, during the short struggle with the Danes in 
885-86, when Alfred secured London for his king- 
dom. The book was then in hand for more than two 
years. By this time he was acquainted with Latin, 
and as the clergy were the teachers of the people, 
the first book he translated was for their benefit. 
It was the Cura Pastoralis^ the Herdsman's Book, 
of Gregory the Great, a manual of the duties of 
the clergy, the description of the ideal of a Christian 
priest ; and a copy was sent ' to every bishop's seat 
in my kingdom,' probably in the year 890. The 
book is the book of a beginner in translation. It 
is more close to its author than the other transla- 
tions. Several paragraphs in the Preface seem to 
speak of the work as the first translation he issued. 
No long original matter is inserted ; but the well- 
known Preface is from Alfred's own hand, and it 
is the beginning of English prose literature. It 
breathes throughout of the king's character. It 



53 

sketches the state of learning in England when he 
came to the throne, and we realise from it how 
much he did for literature, and the difficulties with 
which he had to contend. Its style is curiously 
simple and fresh, and it succeeds in its patriotic 
effort to be clear. It is plain here, as in his other 
writings, that ^Elfred said to himself, ' I will try 
to make the most ignorant understand me.' 

So many translations of this Preface have been 
published that it does not seem necessary to insert 
any quotation from it, but at the end Alfred has 
added some verses of his own, and their simplicity, 
their faint imaginative note, their personal and 
tender religious feeling, their being perhaps the first 
verses that he wrote, induce me to paraphrase 
them : 

These are the waters which the God of hosts pro- 
mised for our comfort to us dwellers on the earth, and His 
will is that these ever-living waters should flow into all 
the world from all who truly believe in Him ; and their 
well-spring is the Holy Ghost. Some shut up this 
stream of wisdom in their mind so that it flows not 
everywhere in vain, but the well abides in the breast of 
the man, deep and still. Some let it run away in rills 
over the land, and it is not wise that such bright waters 
should, noisy and shallow, flow over the land till it 
becomes a fen. But now draw near to drink it, for 
Gregory has brought to your doors the well of the Lord. 
Whoever have brought a water-tight pitcher, let him fill 
it now, and let him come soon again. Whoever have a 
leaky pitcher, let him mend it, lest he spill the sheenest 
of waters and lose the drink of life. 

The second book y^lfred translated was Baeda's 
Ecclesiastical History of the E?iglish^ 8 90-9 1 . It was 
done not only to instruct the clergy in the history 
of their Church, but also the people in the history 
of their own land. It omits several chapters of the 
original, and the king adds nothing of his own. 
We may wonder why he gave no particular account 
in it of the history of Church and State in Wessex, 
but this curious omission may be explained by the 



54 

fact that in 891 he had begun to work up the 
English Chronicle into a national history, and did 
not care to write two accounts of the same matter. 

A certain portion of the Chronicle already existed. 
This was probably made by Bishop Swithun of 
Winchester shortly after the death of ^thelwulf, 
and runs up to the year 855. It took the meagre 
annals made at Winchester as its basis, filled 
them from tradition back to Hengest, and then 
told at some length the wars and death of 
^thelwulf. Alfred, finding this account, caused it 
to be carefully investigated and written up to date, 
with a full history of his wars with the Danes. 
The style of this history is of the same kind 
throughout, and it is more than probable that 
it was the work of his own hand. Condensed, 
bold, rough, and accurate, it is a fine beginning 
of the historical prose of England. This is the 
manuscript of the Annals of Winchester, pre- 
sented by Archbishop Parker to the library of 
Corpus Christi at Cambridge, and the copy is in 
one handwriting. 

The next book the king translated, about 891-93, 
was the History of the World by Orosius. That 
history was written in 418 at the suggestion of 
St Augustine. It was the standard historical 
authority during the Middle Ages, and Alfred 
edited it to teach his people all that was known 
of the world beyond England. He left out what 
he thought needless for them to know, and he filled 
it up from his own knowledge with matters of 
interest to Englishmen and with comments of his 
own. Among these was a full account of the geog- 
raphy of Germany, and of the countries where 
the English tongue had been spoken of old. To 
this he added the personal tales of two voyagers, 
Ohthere and Wulfstan, who had sailed along 
the coasts of Norway and the German shores of 
the Baltic. Ohthere had made two voyages, 
one northward as far as the mouth of the 
Dwina where it poured into the White Sea, the 



55 

other down the eastern coast of Denmark till 
he saw the Baltic running upwards into the 
land ; and the king adds, * He had gone by the 
lands where the Engle dwelt before they came 
hither.' Wulfstan, starting from Haithaby, the 
capital of the old Engle-land, went for seven days 
and nights along the German coast till he reached 
the Vistula. These journeys the king, sitting in 
his chamber in the royal house, wrote down, prob- 
ably from the dictation of the mariners. It is a 
pleasant scene to look upon. The style of this 
writing is, as usual, concise, simple, and straight- 
forward, with a touch of personal pleasure in it. 

These translations were the work of about five 
years, from 888 to 893. In the latter year he was 
interrupted by the invasion of the Viking Hasting 
and the rising of the Danelaw. This was the 
last effort of the Danes against him, and in 897 
he had completely crushed it by the capture of 
the Danish fleet. From that date till his death 
in 901 he had the stillness he loved, and he 
returned to his literary work. The book he now 
undertook to translate (897-98) was the De Con- 
solatione PhilosophicE^ which Boethius had written 
in prison to comfort his heart. It is a dialogue 
between him and Philosophy, who consoles him 
for trouble by proving that the only lasting happi- 
ness is in the soul. The wise and virtuous man 
is master of all things. The book is the final 
utterance of heathen Stoicism, but was so near 
to the conclusions of Christianity that the Middle 
Ages believed the writer to be a Christian ; and 
his book was translated into the leading lan- 
guages of Europe. Its serious, sorrowful, but 
noble argument suited well with the circumstances 
of Alfred's life and with his spiritual character. 
He added to Boethius long passages of his own ; 
and the fifth book is nearly altogether rewritten by 
the king. He filled the Stoic's thought with his 
own profound Christianity, with solemn passages 
on the Divine Nature and its relation to man's will 



56 

and fate, with aspiring hopes and prayers. Many 
inserted paragraphs have to do with his own hfe, 
with the government of his kingdom, with his 
thoughts and feehngs as a king, with his scorn of 
wealth and fame and power in comparison with 
goodness. He stands in its pages before us, a 
noble figure, troubled, but conqueror of his 
trouble ; master of himself ; a lover of God and 
his people, dying, but with a certain hope of 
immortal peace. 

Whether he or another translated into English 
verse the Metra with which Boethius interspersed 
his prose is not as yet settled by the critics. If we 
believe the short poetical prologue to the oldest of 
the manuscripts, the English version of the Metra 
in poetry is the work of the king, and it would 
illustrate his intellectual activity if we could be sure 
he translated them into verse. But we do not 
know. Nor do we know for certain what else he 
did before his death. It is more or less agreed 
that he made a translation which we possess of the 
Soliloquia of St Augustine, and the Preface to this 
book by the writer is a pathetic farewell to his work 
as a translator, and a call to others to follow his 
example for the sake of England. Its parabolic 
form makes it especially interesting. A letter of 
St Augustine's, De Videndo Deo^ is added to the 
Dialogue between St Augustine and his Reason. 
The English translation of the whole is divided 
into three dialogues, and the first two are called a 
' Collection of Flowers.' The third dialogue closes 
with ' Here end the sayings of King Alfred,' and 
the date is probably 900. 

His last work — and it fits his dying hand — was a 
translation of the Psalms of David. It is supposed, 
but very doubtfully, that we have in the first fifty 
psalms of the Paris Psalter this work of Alfred's. 
He did not live to finish it. In 901 this noble 
king, the 'Truth-teller,' 'England's Darling,' 'the 
unshakable pillar of the West Saxons, full of jus- 
tice, bold in arms, and filled with the knowledge 



57 

that flows from God,' passed away, and was laid 
to rest at Winchester. 

Only two books not done by himself were, as 
far as we know, set forth in his reign. One was 
the Dialogues of Gregory^ translated, by Alfred's 
request, by Werfrith, Bishop of Worcester. Alfred 
wrote the Preface, and it breathes throughout of 
his kingly character. The other was the Book of 
Martyrs^ a year's calendar of those who had wit- 
nessed to the Faith. It does not follow that no 
other books but these were written during his reign 
in • English, but it is probable that Alfred stood 
almost alone as an English writer. Asser's Life 
of the king was in Latin. On the whole Alfred's 
efforts to make a literary class, even the schools he 
established for that purpose, were a failure. It was 
not till nearly a hundred years after him that the 
work he did for English bore fruit in the revival of 
English prose by ^Elfric. 

Alfred was not a literary artist, but he had the 
spirit of a scholar. His desire for knowledge was 
insatiable. His love of the best was impassioned. 
It is a pity Asser did not bring him into contact 
with Virgil and the rest of the great Romans. But 
England had the first claim on him, and he col- 
lected with eagerness the English poems and songs. 
He translated from Baeda his country's history ; he 
himself shaped a national history ; he collected and 
arranged the English laws of his predecessors, and 
he added new laws of his own and his Witan's. 
He taught his people the history of other lands. 
He had as great an eagerness to teach as to learn. 
He was not only the warrior, the law-giver, the 
ruler, but the minister of education. And the style 
in which he did his work reveals the simple, 
gracious, humble, loving character of the man. It 
is steeped in his natural personality, and it charms 
through that more than through any literary ability. 
It is always clear ; its aim is to be useful to his 
people ; and it gains a certain weight and dignity 
from his long experience in public affairs, in war 



S8 

and policy. The impression he has made on 
England is indelible, and his spirit has not ceased 
to move among us. 

-asift-ed and the Work of a King*. 

Reason ! indeed thou knowest that neither greed nor 
the power of this earthly kingdom was ever very pleasing 
to me, neither yearned I at all exceedingly after this 
earthly kingdom. But yet indeed I wished for material 
for the work which it was bidden me to do, so that I 
might guide and order with honour and fitness the power 
with which I was trusted. Indeed thou knowest that no 
man can show forth any craft ; can order, or guide any 
power, without tools or material — material, that is, for 
each craft, without which a man cannot work at that 
craft. This is then the material of a king and his tools, 
wherewith to rule — That he have his land fully manned, 
that he have prayer-men, and army-men, and workmen. 
Indeed thou knowest that without these tools no king 
can show forth his craft. This also is his material — That 
he have, with the tools, means of living for the three 
classes — land to dwell upon, and gifts, and weapons, 
and meat, and ale, and clothes, and what else the three 
classes need. ... 

And this is the reason I wished for material wherewith 
to order (my) power, in order that my skill and power 
should not be forgotten and hidden away, for every work 
and every power shall soon grow very old and be passed 
over silently, if it be without wisdom ; because whatsoever 
is done through foolishness no one can ever call work. 
Now would I say briefly that I have wished to live 
worthily while I lived, and after my life to leave to men 
who should come after me my memory in good deeds. 

(From the De Consolatione Philosophice.^ 

-Alfred's Preface to the 'De Consolatione.* 

King Alfred was the translator of this book, and 
turned it from Latin into English as it is now done. 
Sometimes he set down word for word, sometimes 
meaning for meaning, as he could translate most plainly 
and clearly in spite of the various and manifold worldly 
cares which often occupied him in mind and body. 
These cares, which in his days came on the kingship he 



59 

had undertaken, are very hard for us to number. And 
yet, when he had learned this book and turned it from 
Latin into the English tongue, he then wrought it 
afterwards into verse, as it is now done. And now he 
begs, and for God's sake prays every one whom it may 
please to read the book, that he pray for him, and that 
he blame him not if he understood it more rightly than 
he (the king) could. For every one, according to the 
measure of his understanding and leisure, must speak 
what he speaketh and do what he doeth. 

-Alfred's Prayer. 

Lord God Almighty, shaper and ruler of all creatures, 

I pray Thee for Thy great mercy, and for the token of 

the holy rood, and for the maidenhood of St Mary, and 

for the obedience of St Michael, and for all the love of 

Thy holy saints and their worthiness, that Thou guide 

me better than I have done towards Thee. And guide 

me to Thy will to the need of my soul better than I can 

myself And stedfast my mind towards Thy will and 

to my soul's need. And strengthen me against the 

temptations of the devil, and put far from me foul lust 

and every unrighteousness. And shield me against my 

foes, seen and unseen. And teach me to do Thy will, 

that I may inwardly love Thee before all things with a 

clean mind and clean body. For Thou art my maker 

and my redeemer, my help, my comfort, my trust, and 

my hope. Praise and glory be to Thee now, ever and 

ever, world without end. Amen. 

{De Cons., Bk. v.) 

Poetry from iClfred to the Conquest. 

During the reign of Alfred poetry was not 
altogether neglected in Wessex. It is more than 
probable that it was at the king's instance that the 
poetry of Northumbria was collected and translated 
into the dialect of Wessex, in which dialect we now 
possess it. Among the rest we may surely count 
the lost poems of Caedmon of which Alfred had 
read when he translated the Ecclesiastical History. 
Then also, Genesis A, whether by Caedmon or not, 
now appeared in West Saxon. Now, there was a 
great gap^ in the manuscript after the line 234, 



6o 

and some copyist of the poem inserted, in order 
to fill up the space, Hnes 235-851, out of an Old 
Saxon poem (it is supposed) which had been trans- 
lated into West Saxon. It is thought from certain 
similarities in diction, manner, and rhythm that 
this Old Saxon poem (some lines of which, 
identical with corresponding lines in the West 
Saxon insertion, have been lately discovered) 
was written by the writer of the Heliand or 
by some imitator of his in Old Saxony. At any 
rate this poem was brought to England, translated, 
and a portion of it, relating to the Fall of Man, was 
used to fill up the gap in Genesis A. We call this 
portion Genesis B^ and it differs from the earlier 
Genesis not only in manner, metre, and language, 
but in sentiment and thought. 

It opens with the fall of the rebel angels already 
told in Genesis A. Lucifer, * beauteous in body, 
mighty of mind,' seems to himself to be equal 
with God, and his pride is injured by the. creation 
of man. And the fierce soliloquy into which his 
insolent Teutonic individuality outbreaks is one 
of the finest passages in Anglo-Saxon poetry. He 
is flung into hell, and hafted down by bars across 
his neck and breast in the centre of that abyss 
of pain — swart, deep-valleyed, swept at morn by 
north-east wind and frost, and then by leaping 
flame and bitter smoke. ' Oh, how unlike,' he 
cries, ' this narrow stead to that home in heaven's 
high kingdom which of old I knew ! Adam holds 
my seat ; this is my greatest sorrow ! But could 
I break forth for one short winter hour with all my 
host — but God knew my heart, and forged these 
gratings of hard steel, else an evil work would 
be between man and me. Oh, shall we not have 
vengeance ! Help me, my thanes ; fly to earth ; 
make Adam and Eve break God's bidding ; bring 
them down to hell ; then I shall softly rest in my 
chains.' One of his thanes springs up, and beating 
the fire aside, finds Adam at last and Eve standing 
beside the two trees in Eden. The temptation 



6i 

follows, and it is subtly borne. Adam rejects it ; 
Eve yields, and after a whole day persuades 
Adam to eat the fruit. Then the scornful fiend 
breaks into a wild cry of satisfied vengeance. 
' My heart is enlarged. I have never bowed the 
knee to God. O Thou, my Lord, who liest in 
sorrow, rejoice now, laugh, and be blithe ; our 
harms are well avenged.' 

Adam and Eve are left conscious of their fall. 
Their love is not shattered ; there is no mutual 
reproach. Eve's tenderness is as deep as Adam's 
repentance, and they fall to prayer. This is the 
close of Genesis B. It is full of Teutonic feeling. 
The fierce individuality ; the indignant pride ; the 
fury for vengeance, the joy of its accomplishment ; 
the close comradeship between the lord and his 
thanes ; the tenderness and devotion of the 
woman ; the reverence of the man for the woman ; 
the intensity of the repentance — may all be 
matched from the Icelandic sagas, and they prove 
that the spirit which afterwards made those sagas 
was alive in England in the ninth and tenth 
centuries. 

The second part of the poems which pass under 
the name of Caedmon, and which had the name of 
Christ a?id Satan^ are now allotted by the majority 
of critics to the tenth century, and, presumably, 
to Wessex. Their simple, direct, and passionate 
elements, their imaginative grasp of their subjects, 
seem more Northumbrian than West Saxon, and 
this is not an impossible opinion. They are now 
divided into three poems or fragments of poems, 
the first of which is called the Fallen Angels^ the 
second the Harrowing of Hell, and the third the 
Te7nptation. The character of Satan in them 
differs greatly from that in Ge?tesis A or B, and 
so does the description of hell. The bond of 
comradeship between his thanes and Satan has 
perished, but not that between Christ and His 
thanes. Satan, in an agony of longing for heaven, 
repents, but no mercy is given to him. Dialogue 



62 

enlivens the poems, and their exultant bursts of 
religious praise recall the spirit of Cynewulf. The 
personages are drawn with much humanity. The 
descriptions are vivid and imaginative. We see 
Satan wandering and wailing in his misty hall, 
the weltering sea of fire outside, the cliffs and 
burning marl of hell, the fiends flying before 
Christ when He comes to break down the gates. 
We watch the good spirits in Hades lifting 
themselves, leaning on their hands when He came ; 
their ascent with Him to the feast in the heavenly 
burg, and the fall of Satan from the Mount of 
Temptation through a hundred thousand miles to 
the abyss of hell. 

These are the last religious poems before the 
Conquest which show any traces of imaginative or 
original power. The rest of which we know seem 
to be the dry and lifeless productions of monks in 
the cloisters, and are nothing better than alliterative 
prose. There are a crowd of versions of the Creed, 
the Lord's Prayer, and the Canticles. The Last 
Judgment, a poem from which Wulfstan quotes in 
a homily of loio ; a saints' calendar entitled the 
Menologium, a metrical translation of fifty psalms, 
scattered through a service book ; the translation 
of the Metra of Boethius, if Alfred did not do it ; a 
poem advising a gray-haired warrior to a Christian 
life, and another urging its readers to prayer, 
almost exhaust the religious poetry of the tenth 
and eleventh centuries before the Conquest. With 
the exception of a few lines describing in the 
Menologium the coming of summer, they are 
totally devoid of any literary value. Religious 
poetry had died. 

But this was not the case with secular poetry. 
Ballads and war-songs on any striking story of the 
lives of kings or chiefs, dirges at their deaths, were 
made all over England. The old sagas were put 
into new forms ; the country families and the 
villages had their traditionary songs. None of 
these are left with the exception of the Battle 



63 

of Brunanburh and the Battle of Maldon^ and a 
few fragments inserted in the Chronicle. A few 
prose records, also, in the Chronicle are supposed 
to be taken from songs current at the time. More- 
over, it is plain from the statements of Henry of 
Huntingdon and William of Malmesbury that they 
used ballads of this time in their histories. More- 
over, the old sagas were sung by wandering min- 
strels at every village fair, in the halls of the burgs, 
in the tents and round the bivouacs of the soldiers ; 
and the chieftain's bard, after every deed of war, 
sang the doings and the deaths of the warriors 
when the feast was set at night. There may have 
been other poems of a more thoughtful character, 
like the Rhyjne-Poem in the Exeter Book^ which 
belongs to the tenth century. It is the only poem 
in the English tongue which is written in the 
Scandinavian form called Runhenda^ in which 
the last word of the first half of the verse is 
rhymed, in addition to the usual alliteration, with 
the last word of the second half This form 
was used by Egill Skallagrimsson, the Icelandic 
skald, in the poem by which he saved his life from 
Erik Blood-Axe in 938. Egill was twice in 
England, and was a favourite of King ^thelstan. 
It is supposed that he made known this form 
of poetry to the writer of the Rhyme-Song^ and 
this supposition is the origin of the date assigned 
to it — 940-50. It is worth little in itself, and its 
subject is one common to English song — the 
contrast between a rich and joyous past and 
a wretched present. 

It is pleasant to turn from it to the noble songs 
of Brnnauburli and Maldon. At Brunanburh, in 
the year 937, England, under ^thelstan, Alfred's 
grandson, vindicated her short-lived unity against 
the Danes, the Welsh, and the Scots, under Anlaf 
the Dane and Constantinus the king of the Scots. 
The song, recast by Tennyson, is no unworthy 
beginning of the war-poetry of England. Its 



64 

patriotism is as haughty as that of the * Fight 
at Agincourt,' the 'Battle of the Bahic,' and the 
* Charge of the Light Brigade.' It resembles 
them, also, in its rough and clanging lines, in 
its singing and abrupt stanzas. Its English style 
is excellent, and it has the old heathen ring. It 
gives us a high idea of the value of the lost 
battle-songs of Old England. 

The Figlit at MaMon is of a different character. 
It is not so much of a composition. It reads as 
if it were written by an eyewitness. It uses the 
heroic terms ; the warriors challenge one another 
as they do in the sagas, as they have done since 
the days of Homer. The tie that knitted chief to 
thane and thane to chief is as keenly dwelt on as 
it is in Genesis and in Beowulf. The rude cries of 
defiance are like those in the Fight at Fiftnsburg. 
The charge of cowardice, of faithlessness to their 
oath of service, which is made against those who 
flee the fight might have been written by one who 
had read the similar passage in Beowulf. The 
boasting and praise of those who died defending 
their lord might also be drawn from Beowulf It 
is clear that this poem, written at the end of the 
tenth century — in 991 — is as frankly heroic as any 
heathen poem. The old spirit lived on in the songs 
of war. 

The battle is fought on the east of England, in 
the estuary of an Essex river. A roving Viking 
band, sailing up the river Panta, land on the spit 
of ground that divides the stream into two branches. 
On the northern shore lay Maldon, and Earl 
Byrhtnoth comes to do battle with the pirates. 
The tide is full, and for a long time the ford is 
impassable. The two bands shoot at one another 
with arrows. At last the ebb allowed them to 
meet at the ford and on the bank, where Byrht- 
noth, in his chivalry, permitted them to land. But 
the Danes were too many for the English, and 
the great Earl died on the field. And his thanes, 



65 

save a few cowards, died round him, fighting to 
the last. 

His death-song is not like that of Beowulf. 
For the first time in English battle - poetry the 
chieftain dies with a Christian cry upon his lips. 
It is the beginning of a new element in the 
poetry of war. He dies as the knights die in 
the Chansons de Geste. Their last words are a 
prayer to Christ. We seem to feel in this 
change the breath of a new life, of a new world 
— of the life and world of romance. After 
this poem silence follows. The Fight at Maldon 
is the last song of the war-poetry of England 
before the Conquest. Not till long after the 
Conquest did it rise again, and then it rose 
almost a stranger to the ancient English ways. 
The Celtic and the Norman spirit had transformed 
it ; but deep below, and lasting through centuries 
of English song, the strong, constant, deep-rooted 
elements of the Teutonic race lay at the founda- 
tion of the English poetry of physical and moral 
battle. 



Eve, after she has eaten of the Tree of 
Knowledg'e. 

Sheener to her seemed all the sky and earth ; 

All this world was lovelier ; and the work of God, 

Mickle was and mighty then, though 'twas not by man's 

device, 
That she saw (the sight) — but the Scather eagerly 
Moved about her mind. 

*• Now thyself thou mayest see, and I need not speak it — 
O thou, Eve the good, how unlike to thy old self 
Is thy beauty and thy breast since thou hast believed my 

words. 

Light is beaming 'fore thee now, 
Glittering against thee, which from God I brought, 
White from out the Heavens. See thy hands may 

touch it ! 
Say to Adam then, what a sight thou hast, 
And what powers — through my coming ! ' 



66 

Then to Adam wended Eve, sheenest of all women, 
Winsomest of wives, e'er should wend into the world, 
For she was the handiwork of the heavenly King. 

Of the fruit unblest 
Part was hid upon her heart, part in hand she bore. 
* Adam, O my Lord, this apple is so sweet. 
Blithe within the breast ; bright this messenger ; 
'Tis an Angel good from God ! By his gear I see 
That he is the errand-bringer of our heavenly King ! 

I can see Him now from hence 
Where Himself He sitteth, in the south-east throned. 
All enwreathed with weal ; He who wrought the world. 
And with Him I watch His angels, wheeling round about 

Him, 
In their feathered vesture, of all folks the mightiest, 
Winsomest of war-hosts ! Who could wit like this 
Give me, did not God Himself surely grant it me ? 

Far away I hear — 

And as widely see — over all the world, 

O'er the universe widespread ! — All the music mirth 

In the Heavens I can hear ! — In my heart I am so clear. 

Inwardly and outwardly, since the apple I have tasted. 

See ! I have it here, in my hands ; O my good Lord ! 

Gladly do I give it thee ; I believe from God it comes ! ' 



Repentance of . Adam and Eve. 

* Thou mayst it reproach me, Adam, my beloved. 

In these words of thine ; yet it may not worse repent 

thee, . 
Rue thee in thy mind, than -it rueth me in heart.' 
Then to her for answer Adam spoke again — 

* O if I could know the All-Wielder's will. 

What I for my chastisement must receive from Him, 
Thou should'st never see, then, anything more swift, — 

though the sea within 
Bade me wade the God of Heaven, bade me wend me 

hence 
In the flood to fare — Nor so fearfully profound 
Nor so mighty were the Ocean, that my mind should 

ever waver — 
Into the abyss I'd plunge, if I only might 
Work the will of God ! ' 

(From Genesis B.) 



67 

Prose from JElfred to the Conquest. 

Alfred, though he began the prose of England, 
failed in establishing it. No results, save one, 
followed his work till ninety years had passed 
away. The one exception was the narrative in 
the Chronicle of the wars and government of 
Eadweard, Alfred's son, 910-924. Alfred's own 
work on the Chronicle ceased in 891. Another 
writer of vigour, earnestness, and conciseness told 
the story of the years from 894 to 897. From 
897 to 910 the record is meagre, but a new life 
was given to the Chronicle by the narrative 
which began with 910. It may have been 
written by the same man who wrote of the 
years 894-97. His work ceases with the death of 
Eadweard, and it is the sole piece of secular prose 
which we possess at this date. From 925 to 940, 
during the reign of ^thelstan, the shallow records 
of the Chronicle are only once filled by the Song 
of Brunanburh (see page 24). From 940. to 975, 
during the reigns of Eadmund, Eadred, and 
Eadgar, the Chronicle contains nothing but short 
annual statements of leading events. Three small 
poems are inserted in it. 

Secular prose then had died at Winchester. But 
religious prose now began to rise again with the 
revival of monasticism, begun by Dunstan and 
nursed into life by King Eadgar. Dunstan, in 
whom Celtic and English elements mingle, set 
up a school at Glastonbury, and made his 
pupils love the arts of music, of poetry, of 
design and embroidery, of gold-working, painting, 
and engraving, in all of which he was himself 
a master. He sang the Psalms with his boys, 
developed church ritual and music, drew the Irish 
scholars to his help, made a fine library and 
treasury, - and, having trained his monks in all 
the known branches of learning, sent them forth 
as missionaries of education to various parts of 
England. His best scholar, ^thelwold, was 
made head of the Abbey of Abingdon, re- 



68 

founded by King Eadred ; and ^thelwold, who 
died in 904, soon made Abingdon as good 
a school as Glastonbury. It was his favourite 
pupil, ^Ifric, who created the new prose of 
England. 

This revival of English prose kept step with the 
revival of monasticism. Monasticism had fallen 
into complete decay when Eadgar came to the 
throne in 959. Dunstan's effort, assisted as he was 
by Oswald of Ramsey and Odo of Canterbury, had 
not pushed it far. Even the Rule itself of Benedict 
had slipped out of memory, and Oswald and ^thel- 
wold had to go or send to Fleury to recover it. But 
Eadgar threw himself eagerly into the movement, 
and ^thelwold, now Bishop of Winchester in 963, 
gave his full energy to the work. He cleared Win- 
chester of the lazy secular clergy ; he refounded 
Ely, Peterborough, and Thorney. No better work 
could be done for literature than this re-creation of 
the monasteries. Art, the science of medicine, the 
study of the Scriptures, of philosophy, of astro- 
nomy, and of literature, revived with their revival. 
The preaching and homilies of the monks brought 
religion as well as a kind of education to the 
people. And the new teaching was now given in 
the language of the people. At last the work of 
vElfred began to produce its fruit. 

yEthelwold loved his native tongue ; King 
Alfred's books were studied at Abingdon, 
and his principle — Teach Englishmen in English 
— was followed and established. The Blickling 
Homilies^ nineteen of which exist, and probably 
the Homilies in the Vercelli Book belong to the 
early time of the monastic revival — from 960 to 
990. They represent, with certain books men- 
tioned by ^Ifric and now lost, the transition be- 
tween the prose of _/Elfred and that of ^Ifric. 

A new and more literary English prose now 
began with iElfric. He was born about 955, and 
educated at Winchester. ^Ifhead, ^thelwold's 
successor, sent him in 987 to teach and govern 



69 

the new monastery of Cerne Abbas in Dorset- 
shire, and here he first followed King Alfred's 
plan, and translated Latin books into English 
for the use of the people. He returned to Win- 
chester in 989, where he continued his work 
till the Thane ^thelmaer, who had founded a 
Benedictine monastery at Eynsham, near Oxford, 
made him its abbot. There, in that quiet place, 
he hved, learning and teaching, until he died 
about 1022. 

His first book, HomilicB Catholicce^ 990-94, is 
dedicated to Archbishop Sigeric, and consists of 
two collections of homilies, forty in each collection, 
on the Sundays and feast-days of the year. A small 
number of them are in alliterative verse. Then he 
composed the Grammar and the Glossary^ which 
were probably followed by the Colloquium. As 
the Homilies addressed the people, these books 
addressed the pupils at the school of Winchester. 
The Colloquium is a discourse on the occupations 
of the monks and on various states of life ; and as 
one of the manuscripts has an English transla- 
tion over its lines, it becomes a kind of vocabulary. 
It was re-done by another ^Ifric, one of his 
scholars, ^Ifric Bata, with appendices. The lives 
of the saints, Passiones Sanctorum^ another set of 
homilies, followed in 996. Other works of less 
importance were now taken up ; but, urged thereto 
by Thane ^thelweard, he began to translate 
the Bible, part of which, from Genesis xxiv. to 
the end of Leviticus, ^thelweard had given to 
another hand. The beginning, then, of Genesis 
was done by ^Ifric, with Numbers, Deuteronomy, 
Joshua, Judges, Esther, Job, and Judith. The 
books are not literally translated ; parts are 
omitted, and parts are thrown into homiletic form. 
yElfric used the same liberties with the Bible which 
Alfred had used with Boethius and Orosius ; and 
he gave this work the same patriotic tinge as 
Alfred had given to his translation of Orosius. 
The heroic sketches he made out of the Bible of 



70 

the warriors of Israel not only taught the people 
the sacred history, but were also applied by him 
to encourage Englishmen against their foes. * I 
have set forth Judith^ he says, ' in English for an 
example to you men that ye may guard your 
country against her foes ; ' and he closes the 
Homilies with a hymn of praise to God for the 
great men in all history who had borne witness to 
the faith, and among them to Alfred, ^thelstan, 
and Eadgar, the noble champions of England. 

The Canones ^Ifrici^ which followed his transla- 
tions of the Bible, were written about the year looo. 
They were in Latin and addressed to the clergy. 
In .1006 or 1007, when he was Abbot of Eynsham, 
he made a book of extracts from the writings of 
his master, ^Ethelwold — De Consuetudine Monach- 
orum ; addressed a homily on forgiveness to his 
friend Wulfgeat, a royal thane at Ilmington ; 
another on chastity to Thane Sigeferth ; and 
about the same time, 1008, composed a treatise 
Concerning the Old and New Testament^ which 
was a practical introduction to the study of the 
Scriptures. Then, turning from English to Latin 
prose, he wrote a sympathetic life of his master. 
Vita jEthelwoldi^ and a Sermo ad Sacer dotes for 
Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, about 10 1 4-1 6 ; 
and Wulfstan made him turn it into English. 
Other homilies, needless to record, he also 
made, and then died quietly between 1020 and 
1025. 

^Ifric was the Baeda of his time. He was the 
assimilator, collector, and distributor of learning, 
not its creator. He had no originality, but he 
loved his work and his country. The principles of 
education which Alfred had established he carried 
out steadily. He trained the people as well as the 
clergy in their duties, in the history of the Church 
abroad and at home ; and his charming character, 
full of moral dignity, tact, gentle charity, and wisdom 
in affairs, recommended and enhanced his books 
and letters. In one thing he was original — in his 



71 

style. He made a new, a lighter, more musical' 
more lissome prose. He fitted English to take 
up the number of new subjects which were soon 
to engage the interests of the country. We cannot 
tell what English prose might have become had 
this modern style been developed. But the Danish 
invasion checked and the Norman Conquest para- 
lysed it for a long time. ^Elfric's English prose 
had, however, one great fault. It became more 
and more alliterative — that is, it was prose written 
in poetic form. This manner, chiefly practised in 
his Homilies^ may have been used to please the 
people and for their sake, but it injures the life 
of prose, and, when continued, kills it. 

The creation of this new, popular, and flexible 
prose was one result of ^Elfric's work. Another 
result was the increase of learning and of a 
higher life among the clergy. The Archbishops 
Sigeric and Wulfstan, the Bishops Wulfsige and 
Kenulf, were inspired by him, and they begged 
him to write such books in English as would 
enable them to teach their clergy the rudiments of 
learning and the practice of a holy life. And the 
effort was not in vain. The clergy began to have 
a higher ideal of their profession, and to follow 
it ; and so many small books on various ecclesias- 
tical and theological matters were put forward in 
the eleventh century that it is plain the English 
clergy at the Conquest were not so ignorant as 
the Normans declared them to be. 

A third result of ^Ifric's work was the creation 
of a small literary class among the nobles, some 
of whom now became learners and patrons of 
literature, ^thelweard, probably the writer of the 
Chronicle which bears his name, a royal thane, 
urged ^Ifric to write and began his translation 
of the Bible, ^thelmasr, his son, was ^Ifric's 
close friend and patron, and brought him into 
friendship with Wulfgeat, Sigweard, and Sigeferth, 
also nobles, for whom he wrote books. It is clear 
that the class ^Elfred was unable to touch had now 
begun to be a cultivated class. 



72 

The mass of the people were also educated by 
the great body of homilies which ^Ifric had written 
for them ; and the legends of the saints and the 
tales of the martyrs, going hand-in-hand with the 
saga stories over England, awakened the imagina- 
tion of the farmer and the peasant. 

Then, too, the monasteries, under his influence, 
now became the home of learned men who wrote 
on science as well as on theology. Byrchtfercth, 
of the monastery at Ramsey, was a well-known 
mathematician ; and his commentaries on the 
scientific works of Bseda, and his Life of Dunstan, 
prove his literary activity. The varied knowledge 
shown in these books, which date before 1016, 
makes it almost certain that he was the writer 
of a Hand-book in English which discusses the 
alphabets and subjects belonging to natural 
philosophy. Then a number of medical books 
were published in this eleventh century. The 
LcEce-Boc of the tenth century was re-edited, 
with many interesting additions ; the Herbarium 
Apuleii^ the Medicina de Quadrupedibus^ and 
others of the same kind show how active were 
the dispensaries of the monasteries. Many reli- 
gious books — translations of the Psalms, the 
Gospels, and the Pseudo-gospels, Biographies of 
the Fathers, of the martyrs, of saints, and a 
number of sermons — belong also to the first half 
of the eleventh century. Certain books of a 
proverbial and ethical tendency— a Dialogue be- 
tween Salomo a7id SaturnuSy another between 
the Emperor Adrianus and Ritheus^ a selection 
from the Disticha of Cato — illustrate that English 
love for sententious literature which had arisen 
long before Alfred, and which was afterwards, in 
the Proverbs of j^lfred^ connected with his name. 
The Glossaries^ in which the Latin is explained 
by English words, show how much ^Ifric had 
brought Latin into English learning. The Ritual 
of Durham now added to itself a Northumbrian 
gloss. The splendid Evangelium of Lindisfarne 



73 . 

was now interlineated, and so were the Rushworth 
Gospels. 

There was, then, no Httle Hterary activity in the 
first half of this century. But it would have been 
much greater had not England again been fighting 
for her life with the Danes. In loio Thurkill began 
those dreadful raids in which East Anglia, Oxford- 
shire, Buckingham, Bedford, Northampton, Wilt- 
shire, and other parts of Wessex were ravaged and 
plundered, and ^Elfhead, Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, was murdered in his burning town. Wulfstan, 
Archbishop of York 1002-23, heard of these horrors, 
and his Serino Liipi (he called himself Lupus) ad 
Anglos qiiando Dani iJiaxi7ne per seciiti sunt eos^ in 
which he tells the tale of the invasion, and blames 
the sins and cowardice of the English, places him 
among the prose-writers of England. Some other 
homilies he wrote, but the passion and indignation 
with which he filled this sermon, and its weighty 
and vigorous English, isolate it from the rest. He 
sits closest to ^Ifric, who saw along with him the 
outbreak of the Danish storm. 

During the Danish rule over England no fresh 
literature was produced, but the coming of the Nor- 
mans with Edward the Confessor not only strength- 
ened the tendency, which had begun under ^Ifric, 
to write in Latin rather than in English, but also in- 
troduced, and for the first time into English, tales 
from the East already tinged with the thoughts, 
feelings, colour, and life which were to grow into 
the full body of medieval Romance. The history 
of Apollo7iius of Tyre^ used by Shakespeare in the 
play of Pericles^ was now rendered into English 
prose out of the Latin translation of the late Greek 
story. Two other translations out of the Latin re- 
productions of the Greek legends of the life of 
Alexander — the Letters of Alexa7tder to Aristotle 
from Indiu and the Wonders of the East — were 
also made, and brought with them the air and 
the scenery of a new world. They are put into 
excellent English — the last fine English of the 



74 

times before the Conquest, the last fruit, with the 
exception of the Chronicle^ of the tree which Alfred 
had planted ; and which, when it grew again above 
the soil, bore so changed an aspect that its original 
planters would not have recognised it. Its roots 
were the same ; its branches and foliage were dif- 
ferent. Alfred would have been puzzled to read the 
English in which the Ancren Riwle (the Rule of 
Anchoresses) was written in the reign of Henry III. 
It was the first Middle English Prose. 

The English of the Chronicle illustrates this 
transition. The Chronicle is the continuous record 
of Enghsh history in English prose, and it passes 
undisturbed through the Norman Conquest up to 
the death of Stephen. Its Winchester Annals 
practically cease in 1005, or even earlier. They 
were preserved in Canterbury from 1005 to 1070, 
but there are only eleven entries during these sixty- 
five years, and these were made after the Conquest, 
at the election of Lanfranc as archbishop. The 
rest of these Annals is written in Latin, and they 
end with the consecration of Anselm. What 
Winchester dropped Worcester continued. The 
Worcester Annals were carefully kept to the year 
1079. If they were continued to 1 107, that continu- 
ation was merged in the Annals of Peterborough. 
The Worcester Annals of the Chronicle are written 
in the English of ^Ifric, and were probably done 
by Bishop Wulfstan, who held the see from 1062 
to 1095, and by Colman, his chaplain, who wrote 
the bishop's life in English. 

The Peterborough Annals were only fully edited 
after the rebuilding of the monastery in 1121. 
This fine and full edition of the Chronicle was made 
up out of the Annals of Winchester, Worcester, 
and Abingdon, and was then continued probably 
by one hand to the year 1131. Another hand, 
using a more modern English, carried it on from 
1 132 to 1 1 54, when it closed with the accession of 
Henry II. The records at Worcester and Peter- 
borough are not unworthy of the first records at 



75 . 

Winchester. The Wars of Harold and the Fight 
at Stamford Bridge are boldly and picturesquely 
written. Even more picturesque is the account 
another writer gives of Senlac, and of William's 
stark, cruel, and just rule. This writer had lived at 
William's court, and we trace in his finer historical 
form that he had studied the Norman historians. 
The Peterborough scribe who followed him is 
rather a romantic than a national historian, and 
loves his monastery more than his nation. The 
second scribe of Peterborough, who probably com- 
posed his work in 1150-54, is well-known for his 
pitiful and patriotic account of the miseries of 
England under the oppression of the Norman 
nobles. When in 11 54 the Chronicle was closed, 
the Norman chroniclers took up the history of 
England and wrote it in Latin ; but the English 
Chronicle remains for English literature the most 
ancient and venerable monument of English 
prose. 

After the Conquest. 

The Norman Conquest put an end to Old 
English literature. When that literature arose 
again its language and its spirit were transformed. 
Old English had become Middle English. Its 
prose, which was religious, had been profoundly 
changed by the Norman theology and the Norman 
enthusiasm for a religious life. Its poetry, equally 
touched by the Anglo-Norman religion and love of 
romance, adopted as its own the romantic tales, 
melodies, manners, and ways of thinking which 
came to it from France, both in religious and 
in story-telling poetry. But this change took 
nearly a century and a half before it began 
to bear fruit. During those long years of tran- 
sition little English work was done, and none 
of it could be called literature. Old English 
writings, such as the Ho7nilies of ^Elfric and the 
Translations of the Gospels made in the eleventh 
century, and now called the Hatton Gospels^ were 



76 

copied and modernised. Monasteries, remote from 
Norman interests, still clung to, and made their 
little manuals and service books in, the English 
tongue. English prose was just kept alive, but 
only like a man in catalepsy. 

English poetry had a livelier existence ; but we 
have no remains of the songs which were sung 
throughout the country, and which kept alive in the 
soul of franklin, peasant, and outlaw the glories and 
heroes of the past. We know that these were 
made and sung from the Norman chroniclers who 
used them, and from suggestions of them in the 
Brut of Layamon. Lays were made after the 
Conquest of the great deeds of Here ward, and are 
used in the Latin life of that partisan. Even 
in the twelfth century, songs were built on the old 
sagas, such as those which celebrated Weland and 
Wade, his father ; and sagas like Horn^ Havelok^ 
Bevis of Ha7npto7i^ Guy of Warwick^ and Waltkeof 
which took original form in English in the 
thirteenth century, existed as popular lays in the 
eleventh and twelfth. The noble figure of Alfred 
appears again in the poem entitled the Proverbs of 
j^lfred^ an ethical poem of sententious sayings, 
varying forms of which arose in the twelfth 
century. 

Old English poetry, having neither rhyme nor a 
fixed number of syllables, depended on accent and 
alliteration. Every verse was divided into two half- 
verses by a pause, and had four accented syllables, 
the number of unaccented syllables being indif- 
ferent ; and the two half- verses were linked together 
by alliteration. The two accented syllables of the 
first half and one of the accented syllables of the 
second half began with the same consonant, or with 
vowels which were generally different from one 
another. But often there was only one alliterative 
letter in the first half-verse ; and the metre was 
further varied by the addition of unaccented syl- 
lables. The lays made after the Conquest illustrate 
the transition from the old alliterative metre to the 



short line and rhyme which were soon estabhshed 
by the Anglo-Normans when they began to write 
in English. The Poetna Morale is thought by 
some to have first taken shape early in the twelfth 
century. In that case, it and other twelfth-century 
poems of little account bring us still nearer to Mid- 
dle English poetry, if they do not form part of it ; 
but it is best, when we speak of literature, to make 
Middle English poetry properly begin with the first 
noble piece of poetic literature, with the Brut of 
Layamon, at the beginning of the thirteenth cen- 
tury. 

STOPFORD A. BROOKE. 



Bibliography. — The MS. of Beowulf is in the Cottonian 
Library in the British Museum, and Judith is in the same MS. 
The Exeter Book is in the library of Exeter Cathedral, and was 
placed there by Bishop Leofric in 1071. It contains the Riddles, 
the Elegies, the Crist, the St Guthlac, the Phoenix, the Juliana, 
the Widsith, the Complaint of Deor, and other poems. It is a 
kind of anthology. The Vercelli Book, found at Vercelli in 1822, 
contains, interspersed among homilies, \)ix& Andreas, the Fates of the 
Apostles, the Dream, of the Rood, the Elene, and two unimportant 
poems. The Jtcnian MS. of the so-called Csedmonian poems is in 
the Bodleian. The Fight at Finnsburg was found on the cover of 
a MS. of Homilies at Lambeth, Waldhere on two vellum leaves at 
Copenhagen ; the Battle of Brunanburh is in the Anglo-Saxon 
Chronicle, and the Battle of Maldon in a copy of the original MS. 
made by Hearne. Only one MS. of each of these poems exists. 

Of iElfred's translations we have many MSS. — three of the 
Cura Pastoralis, five of Bcsda's History, two of the Orosius, two 
of the De Consolatione, four of the Laws. The Soliloquia are 
in the MS. containing Beowulf Of iElfric's works there are many 
MSS. Seven MSS. of the English Chronicle exist. MS. A, the 
Parker MS. written at Winchester, is at Cambridge ; MS. B is at 
the British Museum, and was made at Canterbury ; MS. C is at 
the British Museum, and is an Abingdon MS. ; MS. D, also at the 
Museum, is the Worcester Chronicle ; MS. E, now at the Bodleian 
(the Laud MS.), was done at Peterborough ; MS. F, at the British 
Museum, was probably kept at Canterbury ; MS. G, also probably 
kept at Canterbury, is -at the British Museum, and is likely to be a 
copy of MS. A. 

[When Modern English was beginning to show its full powers 
in the hands of the early Elizabethan writers, the oldest stage 

LefC. 



78 

of the tongue was almost forgotten, save for the little knowledge 
required by those whose business it was to spell out and interpret 
Anglo-Saxon charters and the like. At the Reformation Anglo- 
Saxon religious literature was looked up for controversial pur- 
poses ; Archbishop Parker gathered and edited MSS., and greatly 
promoted ' Saxon ' studies. Verstegen shows he knew some Anglo- 
Saxon in his Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in A ntiquities 
(1606) ; and Spelman was driven to make his Glossariuin (Part I. 
1626) by the difficulties he met in studying our oldest laws. Francis 
Junius, or Du Jon, a Continental Protestant who settled in England 
in 1621, devoted himself to the study of Anglo-Saxon and the cog- 
nate Teutonic tongues, edited the so-called Caedmon and other Old 
English books, and gave his name to the Junian MS. Hickes, the 
nonjuring bishop, published the first edition of his Anglo-Saxon and 
Moeso-Gothic Grammar in 1689 ; and all students of early English 
history owe a debt of gratitude to Thomas Hearne, ' who studied 
and preserved antiquities.' Percy in his Reliques takes no cognis- 
ance of the oldest poetry. Warton's History of English Poetry 
(vol. i. 1774) professedly begins with the close of the tenth century ; 
but what he says b}'- way of introduction on the three successive 
' dialects of Saxon ' — British Saxon (till the Danish occupation), 
Danish Saxon (' British Saxon corrupted by the Danes'), and Nor- 
man Saxon (' Danish Saxon adulterated with French') — shows how 
far he was to seek in this field ; ' the spurious Csedmon's beautiful 
poetical paraphrase of the Book of Genesis' he names as written 
in Danish Saxon. Gray's knowledge of Icelandic and his interest 
in Welsh poetry and in ' Ossian ' make it certain that, had he carried 
out his projected History of Poetry^ the section on what he called 
* the introduction of the poetry of the Goths into these islands 
by the Saxons and Danes ' would have received fuller attention 
than heretofore. Vicesimus Knox's Elegant Extracts (first of 
many editions, 1783) does not include this period within its scope. 
The first edition of Ellis's Speci^netis of the Early English Poets 
(1790) has nothing earlier than Surrey and Wyatt ; but the 1801 
edition gives not only Middle English poems, but the old song of 
Brunanburh, with a literal translation, and the ingenious rendering 
made by Hookham Frere, when an Eton schoolboy, into Rowley- 
like fourteenth-century English. In the notes Ellis accepts for 
Anglo-Saxon words derivations from ' Chaldaic ' and Latin as 
unhesitatingly as from 'Gothic' Rask the Dane put the study 
on a sounder philological footing by his Grammar (1817), which 
Thorpe translated ; and the works of Thorpe, Bosworth, and Kemble 
in the first half of the century revived in the English people interest 
in their old language and literature. Conybeare's Specijiie-ns of 
Anglo-Saxon Poetry appeared in 1826. Campbell begins his 
Specimens of the British Poets (7 vols. 18 19) with Chaucer and 
the Kings Qicair ; and in the earlier issues and reprints of this 
Cyclopaedia (1844-74) Anglo-Saxon literature was dismissed in less 
than three pages. 

For further study the reader may be referred to English Literature 
from the Beginning to the Norma-.t Conquest (1898), by the writer 
of the preceding section of this work, Dr Stopford A. Brooke, or 
to \\\s History of Early English x.iterature (2 vols. 1892), which 
describes and appreciates still more fi lly the whole of the Anglo-Saxon 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




011416 792 7 




HoUinger Corp. 



